Chapter Thirteen, Feast ov Ages

Later that evening, Grand Hall of Windhand

Wine blooming inside of her, the world whirled around in Corinna’s head. She sat at the central table upon carved seat, besides Mordaunt in a stupor and in a hall of reveling enemies. Her captors drank fearless into the night, happy to celebrate the war’s ending and their being on the winning side. Several members of her coven were spreads amongst the menials, presenting food to babbling drunkards and belligerent council members who spat quarrels with each other. While she waited for the fatal effect to mature, her circle of servants waited for her call, to turn tables and break chairs to feast on vengeance even if it should be by mutual ruin.

The Lady’s heart plunged to her liver, sloshing about in carmine seas, how in all the spinning of the stars has it come to this? All our castles made of kindling, draped over fleet fire. Azarra’s sentence of a slow descent shall soon seek my agony. If only this coachman could be swifter! Unless her last laugh against me is cruel farce? That there is no poison but the thought of it planted? Nay, let this pool in the pit of me prove channel to true flight. Away from all evil!

As Corinna mulled doubts Mordaunt revived himself. A second breath for both of them blewfrom his heavy libations. Wine-coated poison made itself evident in him already. Even amid the miasma of her delirium, she saw his shaking palms and thick drapery of sweat. The warlord rambled on, boasting more martial feats and repeatedly defending his enigmatic ‘principles’ (even without provocation), while Corinna’s attention drifted about the great hall. Little interest lived in her for this captor to be crowned, save for the curiosity of when the drink’s lethal lacing might embrace him. Perspirations of a paranoid psyche poured over his brow, leaking sad spirits into the oil of his glee. Pasting beady worry onto his complexion as his gut denounced this apparent victory by rustling shadows & furies from all corners where hung his banners.

Her eyes wanted not to dwell on the wrongness of her betrothed’s pose, how he slumped crooked on a throne. So poorly fitting the look of one who would sit on such seat of elder stone, even one carved for and by the cruelty of her former husband. Corinna’s throat tickled for an omen. Fingers, twitched to tear off tablecloth and wipe away this false display & claw at fate.

The air winched tight with pressure of approaching force. A stillborn tempest rustled her spine and flared memory of Drakkon. Seeing then flashes from a conjoined yet separate life, of long ago when they shared themselves beneath Andrasil boughs in all that budding passion. Anchors of existential woe pulled low her eyelids, though she refused to cry sign of weakness. Sitting instead in mimicry of the serene pose of a muse from one of the great artist’s portraits. Mind hovering on great artists, she thought of Baron and very nearly lapsed into despondency. Her gut churned with both guilt and odd elation at the nights they shared away from their Lord’s knowledge. Then fell to imminent corrosion. Doused in the scalding truth that she would ne’er again see a true face nor hear his verse sung for her.

Again, the tugging of some imminent storm heaved her soul. The dying bride’s brain buzzed, and her stomach gargled pangs. Carefully Corinna slid the carving blade from the meat into the sleeve of her elegant garment, if she should need swifter escape. With her anxiety elevating and heart pumping venom erratically through her veins she could not fully grasp what her eyes even fell d upon in vast hall. Every colour blurred into a muddy palette. All faces seemed illegible scrawl of shade. All humors bubonic or dolorous, all true jeer shirking her sight.

The perpetual drinking, feasting, and fighting ended abruptly, stifled by a clamor at the main entrance. Guards shuffled through and a battalion of armed men were ushered in, a hooded prisoner flanked in the center. Mordaunt’s litany ceased as he stumbled to get to his feet, the wine’s power encompassing his balance and arresting his body’s control. “What is the meaning of this intrusion, captain? This timing is most – most foul.”

Heron presented himself, patient resolution written along his face. He bowed and addressed his master. “Forgive the untimely nature of my return but during my patrol I encountered another pretender. Another one claiming to be the ‘Lord of Living Light’ lost but returned from the nether. An imposter who prods the people’s spirits, their fears, and is thus fit for the pyre! I believe justice should be executed immediately, and allow the blood spilt here to welcome the blessing of the Blood Moon in its early ascent to the peak of fate’s tidings. Consider it a toasting gift of concord for that which we revel tonight.”

Mordaunt stammered to speak but only stuttered incomprehensibly. Then the cloaked prisoner emerged from the herd, casting aside his hood & show shackles. Corinna’s heart pulsated rapidly, her sense of time distorted, as the man in the front of the hall revealed the real visage of Drakkon. His mane showering his shoulders and morbidly pale hands, clasping an obsidian sword, were unmistakable. Heron stepped forth with own his sword as his true lord spoke.

“I am the Lord of Living Light reborn! The grave would not keep me! Those who defile our dominion shall be annihilated justly, but all those who repent their heretic ways shall receive Divine mercy! I am here for righteous wrath against your usurper lord, Mordaunt. He who erred gravely by rejecting my light and attempting to steal my beloved. Make your peace now for the threads of your fate unwind at present! To cut or restore!”

Corinna could not gather whether this scene before her was a feverish hallucination from the draught of death or a reality unfolding about her, but she affirmed her purpose, seeing this as a sign to strike and take her death into her own hands. Corinna leaned over to the servant behind their regal table and whispered firm code: “I have had my fill.”

To this the servant nodded and waltzed away with his beverages over to a mass of fellow servants gathered near the entrance to the kitchen. En masse they withdrew silver athames from their ragged gowns. With nearly every man & mercenary spinning about his chair, drunk and all too few readily armed the hall begot slaughter. Members of Corinna’s Grove took vengeance upon themselves and stabbed at those they’d served dulling mead to. A defiant call against the grave or a leap into it. Meanwhile, Heron and his patrol charged the scattered guards and aimed to surround Mordaunt. The hall found a bed of chaos for them all to lie on.

The pair of crossbowmen previously pointing at the ‘prisoner’ prior pivot and fire to impale those members of the Manticore band who seemed more sober and capable than their peers. Heron’s men challenge the debauchery & glut of Mordaunt’s drakes. Vengeance to thrust against the locks of their fetters to a pretender more callous than the one they announce the return of. Singing Drakkon’s rebirth by tone of steel, bite of bolt & tongue of axe.

Drakkon, black blade returned to hand, charged forward between the main tables. He points his star-steel at the traitor-thief, who weaves, trying to steady himself. “I challenge thee, craven hound, to trial of strength that thou may feel my righteous hand break thy blaspheming shell!” His eye cast seething heat of unfettered wrath. Though the hall was enshrouded in clamor, waves parted for the alignment of returning Emperor and his enemy, with his wife beside him.

Mordaunt’s stomach lurches as he pulled himself up from the table. Striking down the nearest servant, uncaring whether he be ally or agent. Spitting at his adversary, he then glares at Corinna. “Ye hunched harlot! P-poisonous cunny! I-I- will burn ye as the w-witch thou art here before our guests!” His speech staggers as the deathly rot wriggles from gut to gullet.

The fumbling warlord clutches one of the tall wax candles along the dinner table and jabs it at Corinna’s eye. Though balance fades fast from her she catches the sudden blow against her and keeps hot wax from scarring her face, only inches from her skin. Yet the serpent’s froth in her gut saps more of her fervency and she tumbles back.

Drakkon cuts through a couple of glutted mercenaries in his path. Mordaunt, nervous of his approach, turned his gaze to face his challenger. Were his stomach not about to spill or otherwise tear itself open within, the usurper would have given a real challenge, each of their obsidian blades to meet its rival. Yet nervous terror takes him and so he takes Corinna as hostage. Trembling a sword to her neck, he drags her up and himself away. “You are overthrown! Bac-back to the abyss! Or I s-send her to the-there to le-lead you!”

With her last spur of resistance Corinna stabs the carving knife she swiped from the feast at this mad boar’s belly. But, encumbered by the toxin taking over her blood, her wiles only hinder him enough to slip from his hand. She falls towards the cold, plummeting into crimson lake as blood floods the hall. Pooling in the spills as Drakkon’s loyalists flank and butcher the glutted paunches of warriors & diplomats. Drakkon rushes to his lady, slumping from spasms, to be stalled by many assailants.

Bedlam’s snares entangle the hall. Ceaseless scream of steel and shattering splinters, as blood covers the wine stains along the stony floor. Corinna’s disciples refuse to abandon their vindication through violent task upon seeing their matriarch’s stitch. Instead, this rallied their resolve into frenzy, beating Mordaunt’s loyalists bloody. But those men able to fight sternly flare with the volatile ferocity of cornered wolves. A good number of the attendants surrender – some with nothing but their utensils for protection and no reason left to fight – or else made to escape and are cut in the crucible. Yet the fiercest of the Manticore earn their namesake through iron claws.

Despite the prolonged curse sinking through him Mordaunt refuses to submit to death so soon. The fading fiend croaks a call to his men but only manages to spew forth tainted spittle. Frothing poison rushing from his retching throat, he fumbles forward from the fractured table and reaches for his sword. But for all his brawn & willpower Mordaunt could not shuffle off the spell of spiked wine afflicting his liver. His spheres of sapphire ice singe as bloodshot suns in the sockets locked in his skull.

Before he crumples against the cold ground however the former champion launches himself for flight. Will intact enough to plan escape, convincing his body that he could find a cure soon if only he could away from this immediate danger. Grabbing the long banners and curtains by the opening, he winds these threads to a shoddy rope and attempts to rappel down the hold. His brash departure: a mixed batch of fortune. For while absconding Drakkon’s wrath the noxious substance squirming inside, numbing tendons dashes his landing.

Aiming for the adjacent stable roof he crashes through it. Landing roughly in the hay. Adrenaline revives his joints, shoves away paralytic grip of poison & pain. This burst kept him from realizing the shattered leg his fall availed him. Delighting to see how close he was to a steed and means of delaying this end – of enduring to return and give true contest to the loathsome lord.

He screams at the trio of stable hands who jump to the scene. Desperation shoots past the venom in his throat. “A horse! B-loody thralls! Lend thy master a horse!”

More peasants and ‘bloody thralls’ flocked to the spectacle. The clashing in the castle beside their stalls and work routes had them neutered and drained of guts but seeing this awful fall their ‘master’ took brought them back. Something like boldness and a hate beyond bravery awakened inside them. Fury replaced fear. These men & boys of lowly caste were then as furies to the fledgling dictator, avatars of the punishing judgement required of this broken monster.

As Mordaunt crawls from the dust & straw of shattered stall, he leans up to thrash the closest of the boys. He attempts to draw himself up, pulling on the scruffy tunic of the peasant, but stumbles back. His leading leg splinters in two, twisting back on itself. A useless ugly limb, a branch broken by winter’s blow. Blood spills from his gullet as he reaches out again, hollering as hurt returns. “A steed, slave! Let me take flight! I musss g-gif fight to ne’er b-ow ag-ain. The s-saddle is right ther- “

The boy’s father, or perhaps his grandfather, given how white his hair and beaten his brow, punches the ailing lord sideways in the jaw. Rattling the swell in his esophagus to a severe stinging to match the force of his jaw disjointing. “We ain’t no slaves! And you ain’t paid for any steed, thief! ‘Sides yer fall scared the rest of our stock away!”

Another peasant shouts the elder’s acclaim. “Under ye we hath been slowly torn, bit by bloody bit! Our kin split, slowly and sharply, by yer decrees! Divvied up more than e’er by iron fist ye wield to slug us in the jaw- “

“Aye! Nobility ain’t what we see here. This cur is a thief of our arms, our labour – like the Protectorate say - & our sodded heads. Ye cut us up right as soon as we dare keep the coin our arms earned well!”

“Hear that rattle from the castle? They tossed him out. He holds no House, no arms nor ally!”

“Take his arms!” Yells another arrival to this morbid festival.

“Take his fookin’ eyes! Bastard’s been blind to our flight – our plight, I means – let ‘em know it for once!”

“We should take him! Like his men took our daughters!”

“Take the rest of the sod’s legs! Get ‘em!”

They descend upon Mordaunt. His screams, sewn shut early on in his execution. The poison throttling his throat became the glue to end his dying vocalizations. His delusional demands to the mob that grabbed him (threatening their lines’ extinction should they not show their champion the chivalry of a gods damned horse) muddled by the red-brown mud shoveling itself out and over.

First, they stripped the nails from his fingers. Next, those digits were severed. Not by any precise instruments of torture but blunt force of raw human hands tearing away at another’s. Then, Mordaunt was relieved of his boots that his toes could be ripped off with greater ease of access. Each of them took part, took something from him. His manhood was no longer his, a shriveled toy tossed for a game of sack-juggling. His teeth: punched in and their wreckage wrenched from bile coated gums. Without his armor, when they had clawed that off with their furies’ talons, his flesh was as malleable and shareable as torn pounds of flower from the cart.

This world leaves nothing left of you. Came the last clasp of clarity for this corpse-lord. At least in that delirium before reality’s brutality hit him through the worker & laymen’s fists and scythes Mordaunt had been given the false, but hopeful, fancy of being able to see his daughter again. Perhaps the poison steeped into the stew of his brain, addled it with dying fever dreams of those untouchable desires. When that last rational shred of his mind realizing its true fate, as his shape & skin was shredded wholly, he abandoned himself to torment. Swam in pale moonlight.

When any obvious appendage that belonged to Mordaunt was pulled, torn, or cut from his corpse and shared among the jeering peasants those farmhands among them finished this business of rage with countless pitchfork jabs through the paper of his flesh. His intestines were next to fall from his form. A gory and gruesome pulp would be all they left.

‘This, the fate of tyrants.’ The rival lord he’d betrayed would think when he chanced to look later upon the ruins of him, remarking on that gruesome end.

But before that hour came Drakkon busied his hands tearing away the table’s remaining adornments, knocking goblets and plates aside to clear room for Corinna to lie. Agony lived in her veins, dousing her in shock. Carefully he retrieved the golden-emerald elixir and held her chin up to drink from it. At first attempt, prying open her gullet in desperation for the draught, her stomach heaved. She sunk steeply into a dire sweat then into stasis. Erratic spasms fought with paralytic affliction. Till breath fell faint and her complexion stooped to pallid specter.

Heron herded the survivors to separate alcoves, interrogating each as to their loyalty. With his officers he hounded those defiant traitors but spared those who held no faith in the fallen master or repented after seeing the lord still lived. The herald of that very Lord they’d defied addressed his company, as Drakkon turned from them, intent only on Corinna. “Hail gentlemen & ye, children of the Grove! We have won here! Gather yourselves and rest. Windhand shall hold us until we determine the course. Soon the Summit called by the usurper shall his fate. You have done well. Though the way is yet long our lord will grant guidance when we are recouped.”

Picking his ailing love up in his arms, the emperor carried Corinna up the spiraling tower staircase, leaving the bloodbath in the hall behind. Gently he laid her down, giving her space to rest and made secret bargains with the lords of happenstance & misrule for her swift recovery. She floundered as poison funneled from her frothing system. Sparse gasps for oxygen led to spewing out the tainted spittle bubbling inside her belly. Then she lay upon the bed, where cold winds past the windows and Windarian stone seized her motion, wrapped in gauze of velvet cover.

Ghost of Love

Deep into the night

Drakkon remained by his empress’ bedside. For her he forwent the duties of restoring the other threads of responsibility. Staying to her stead, on watch for her to awake. That potion granted her no such swift deliverance as had healed his outer wounds. Instead, it seemed to only sustain her within that cocoon of perpetual slumber. She had fallen into a state akin to sleep. Her chest seemed not to rise at all, though with his eyes so affixed on her stillness a strand of mad want imagined the rising of her breast. Though sparse groans and shakes occasionally arose from her false death – a performance verging on genuine – with the loss of her breath for him, all-purpose fled from the breadth of his dreary cell.

After another endless round of unblinking sight for her, Drakkon’s focus found awareness of another presence in the room. His captain’s poise breathed reluctant patience, a hesitance to turn his lord from his sorrowful vigil, but when the emperor’s eyes met his Heron found fast voice. “My lord, this baleful spell must be broken. Even if it cannot be lifted from her.”

“Have you so little faith? Wherefore this haste to harry her to the barrow? & what is this ornament in your arm?” These questions came out half-furled, as though the act of speaking had become alien after so much silence.

“I hath leaned the last of my faith on thee.” Heron presented the long sheath of obsidian blade to his lord, in who he wondered if this faith was yet misplaced. “I have here the Fang of Vizzarion. Recovered from the menials who claimed it with the last of Mordaunt. Let it be yours again, that with it you shall smite those schemers who aim to steal the Summit.”

“Ah,” Drakkon’s strained sight finally found the black & violet blade. For a second the sword sung with a hunger for him to hold it and let it feast on Heron’s insolent throat but he waved it away. Refusing to touch the hilt and wield any more aimless bloodletters, “this fang is yours. Let it be more stable in thy hands then in those of its fallen master. Keep it. Use it to defend this castle while it holds my Corinna. For I would ask you to remain here as sentinel while I away to this final congress of lords & chieftains.”

Heron’s head shook in confusion, amid mannerism of disdain and cautious nods. His grip was reluctant to claim the ribboned sheath, fearing for that the souls of his former owners tainted the unchipped edge. “If I am to wield this serpent fang let it be with valor to fell those wyrms still gathering ‘round our table at Felhenge. For a tragedy though this is, for her, it will be evermore so if your sight is wholly tainted by it. My blade nor brace shall be useful in guarding a corpse.”

Heron regretted his blunt coldness but dared steel his argument against Drakkon’s retaliation. Yet the fading forefather of Imperium did not choose a tone of ire to respond with but rather fought to rally words against the despondency which housed them. “She will return to us. I know the Summit nears with the rearing of spring and that I must attend to consequence there. But I will not drag her, still ailing, into the wolven den awaiting us on that hill.”

“Good my lord, seek the cool soil of reason. If the vultures that gather there are to be toppled, we must meet them with all living might we have remaining.” Pleaded his half-brother in Heron. “We are already thinned. And while this sword, this fang, is rescued more of our arms hath been lost. The last of the Dragon’s Breath is done - disappeared by thievery or Mordaunt’s misuse. Without Albrecht or his recipes, we are deprived of means to make more. We lack the fire to storm them from the crest should they seize the summit henge against us.”

“The corpse eaters and carrion mongers setting their designs upon that knoll of dead druids shall not have her body for a feast. Should I fall, let only mine be the offering. That breath shall find its way through to her. That if my heart’s sovereign should rise, as the Fates must will it, it shall not be but for a final gasp in face of despair.” Spoke the Lord. “Let this chivalry shield us.”

Heron went to wager a counter only to snap shut his groan when he saw that the lady in question stared on at him. Gasping, he pointed to her. Corinna’s stare sat absent. The green of her eyes turned to gray, looking lifeless even with open lids. Seeing Drakkon rush to her side, his champion excused himself. Out of shame, sense of privacy & annoyance, he departed the pair.

Overwhelmed by the emotions incited from seeing her wake, heightened by her wan fall, Drakkon whispered his want over wisdom. “Incarnate love, thank you for restoring my strength and wisdom. My Cor’. For this chance I shall bear my heart to the sun that true light takes it.” He loomed close to her, that his breath steered hers through to sharp shivers. “You are the earth below my feet and the heavens above my head and you will live on to see a brighter dawn. Brighter than Solaris, deeper than Astraea, you shall persevere. Star of all my nights, I knew you would outshine this daze!”

The gray of Corinna’s iris still rested under gauze of the grave. “In sooth, o phantom lord & deathly lover, I am not of this world any longer. I awake as a ghost encased in fog of fleeting flesh. The grave is of me. Grace hath fled. Till my task is done I remain. Yet were that I wish it sooner. To claim this destiny of drowning ‘neath dream of Erosian wheat and molten tide.”

Drakkon’s astonishment at her revival steered sharply to dejection. To have her here, alive again, and yet be denied and outcast by this nearest heart. Yet he bit down upon this rejection and made to woo her back to the world. “Grace lives by you. That blessing which is your breath and the bold beauty of those dreams whose wings are your lungs. Why not look upon me and know the face of love? Seek in me that sustenance of spirit you hath given me. All that which I have is yours, to be the grounds by which to tread away from this spectral mile that finds you.”

But this insistence, this avowal of attachment, this speaking on pressures to embrace a hearth that was no longer home only pushed her further away, in fright of his feeling. “Astral sight stares long into me. I cannot unwind myself from its view. Please, if you would, leave me awhile to my rest. To know remembrance. Take the mirrors down with you. I must find myself again in reflection of these visions from a breadth beyond ours.”

…

Another night followed the stagnation of that dusky victory. Corinna had been allotted time for her stamina to return, yet she felt an urgency from her resurrected emperor & oath bound spouse born from the pressure of his desire for her time. And the time drew shorter with the days. Dawncrest was upon them. The sliver of the moon grew longer, yearning to embolden its body for carmine alignment.

The wretched vestiges of Azarra’s draught left her, having failed to ravage her health by the stroke of viper’s kiss due to the aid of a different draught. Yet she found herself still confined to sickening pretense, with spirit strained. Some phantom coachman drove her body on, keeping hygiene enough to show herself to the hosts of her imperator husband in the halls below. Gargling with moon water & Lethe leaf to clear her mouth of that last of vile stains and aiding the potion which coated by further cleansing through great fast. Painting her cheeks with rosy brush to hide the ashen hue of her soul’s honest shade. But the sickness of stasis which still stalked her, kept her bedridden through most of the days, was of a more existential accord.

Though the Impress would show herself briefly before the hosts of her imperator husband in the hall below, she forced this composure just to water the waning faith of the gathering army who were to march on Felhenge. Seeing her, their Astraean symbol, well supplanted their faith. But for her every eye stung as arrows of expectation. All this hubbub about her spun her heart into sarcophagus. Retiring swiftly after visions of Baron amongst the labyrinthine crowd edged her loneliness to asphyxiation.

An ornament left in her resting room eyed her restlessly. A bust of that deceased High Mother, that set dead stone stare upon her, dreaming of her demise even now. She’d have enough of the ceaseless glare and decided to toss the thing from the window, cast down the legacy of that damnable conjuror of demigods, prophecy & poison. Yet she found that bars were still set against her aperture, holding her hostage from even an attempt at retribute wrath against petty effigy. A reminder of her constant and enclosing cage.

Gazing long into the statute, Corinna’s inner chambers of breath & blood swelled with sudden discovery. She pressed her lips to Azarra’s cold, down-curled lip. A peck of gratitude. “Thank you, hateful hen. You taught me lessons in resilience that I wish you’d learnt yourself. I will not mock your legacy even as you sought to taint my life. You gave me a tortuous truth & thus a rope to climb up, in struggle to endure which you exemplified – even as woe throttled you.”

Dusk draped the windowsill, eclipsed by iron holds. She picked at her meal halfheartedly and paced in precious solitude. Yet the toll of command and pressures of an invisible crown, forever branded upon her brow, arrived as Drakkon nearing their tower he’d left for her. Knowing well he found her aloofness his form of imprisonment.

Corinna did not flee, didn’t shut him at the threshold, but waited there in silence. Beholding one another with queer caution as the evenfall winds nipped at her selenic gown. Drakkon’s muscle resurrected, their breadth & the broadness of his chest re-materialized from his wiry wraith-self of just days before. Sustenance of Mordaunt’s Evyrheath meats and process sped on by alien elixir. For a breath they surveyed each other in quietude, basking in their mutual survival.

Already in the bitter night air he could feel his tongue drawing heavy words, which were best kept from breaking the serene seal. “It feels like such a dream to near you again. I thought I had lost you forever, and the chains of my sins only bound me to that fear. I can barely grasp the feeling yet but there is some anchor in the back of my mind that is warning me that this ephemeral evening may be one of the last we will ever share… This is all my fault! Damn me!”

With a concerned glance, Corinna lifted her heavy hand to assuage the tears that were accompanying Drakkon’s staggered speech. “Listen, Drakkon. My heart’s fire still burns for thee as well, glowing even into the dark night about us. But I cannot absolve you with mere words, my love.” She pressed her palms about his cheeks and drew herself up, a graveness beneath her undying grace. “I despaired for you, for us, for everyone. Though part of me welcomes you back I cannot offer forgiveness. Too many strands within me have been torn by the pain… Nor can I forgive myself. For all those years, when you pushed me by the wayside and careened your ears to the tongues of Azarra and Mordaunt, I felt abandoned to only the ghost of our love. Thus, these bodies renewed may already be molding our tombs. I should have told you in confession.”

“Told me that I am a misbegotten broodling with no ‘divinity’ in my blood, only the venom of Kassan’s line? Said I am abomination of lineage that scarred generations?” Absolute despondency travelled from quivering maw as gravity tussled his jaw. “I am born vile. The seed of horned horror. It is no wonder I hath destroyed all meaning in life and tainted all ever loved. I thought you knew and yet… Your love seemed so genuine even in reflection that I could not fathom how you could be with me, knowing what I am. How could you love me?”

Faith fled from his chest, this reunion seeming more like his death knell rather than his call to salvation. But Corinna did not waver in her resolve and wove herself about his shoulders and whispered avidly. “What we had was once real, beyond any standing in the public theatre. I was drawn to you not because I thought you were a god but to the light of humanity that shined the true spark of divinity! But Azarra’s web ensnared your soul, wove threads in our union! I wish it was not truly you. Only a symptom of the madness she imbued. and let all that cruelty pour into your actions. But you long obeyed of your accord. Lured to cruelty yet let it rule you.”

The reprised Lord of Imperium succumbed to mewling impulse. “Often, I get caught up in woe after all that I’ve wrought by drinking delirium as gin. My faith is forlorn, and I know not how to trudge on a few more steps. Teetering over the abyss of myself at every moment. I fear I am not as strong as I need to be to endure this world. That the thrashings of guilt will not relent. Perhaps my punishment is to end my wretched line with these Bear-blooded hands. To seek appeasement from any gods that should see my suffering and weigh it worthy through sacrifice of my sacrilegious sculpture!”

“Be strong, Drakkon! You can cast off the chains bound you in since birth. Be more than a son – a mirror - to your mother and father. Stand out of their shadow to seek the light of yourself. The future may be unknown, but it can be ours to shape. Now that you have been freed of unliving myth you’ve a chance to be reborn in image of your own. Become what you are willing to be!”

His bawling persisted, her words melting the ice layering his core. Silence fell between them, draping over the span of several minutes. The dark wilderness of the unknown entangled their souls, though there was yet space for reflection in the other’s embrace. Finally, Drakkon broke the still air, speaking graveled seriousness. “The eclipse is coming soon, and the assembly is summoned to Felhenge. Mordaunt, that fiend, was clever to call it. But now so close to those pedestal steps, I feel this imminent dread approaching. To face all the world, knowing what I truly am, there is so much uncertainty for what path to take. Any choice is a gambit. To not choose is slower suicide.”

The lowly emperor sighed sadly and meandered over to the table where he poured himself a strong elixir. Not normally one for drinking he raised the glass awkwardly and gave a toast to himself before gulping it down to pour another. Cheers to the waning of the world and what shall follow in these days, to what else entropy shall claim of us. But his posture was altered by the potent, inebriating potion rather swiftly, and his expression warmed with his belly. “I know I must first invoke your forgiveness, Corinna, but with this feeling in me I am compelled to ask for your company this night. Will you accept me? To share this bed with you would melt away so much of what is weighing down on my soul.”

Corinna turned her head from his approach and stared afar out the window ledge. Her eyes glistened with pain as she spoke her heart. “Drakkon – your hands are still stained from death… It’s all too freshly red for me. The thought too much to rightly fathom while my head is still whirring. My frame so meek & maimed and there is no mending fast enough for me to just accept this.” The iron barricade dividing dusk-light became an echo of the bars over love.

“I must devote time in solitude to delve into the well of who I truly am. Just as you must do!” Luster had left her, fled by way of wet trail from limping lament. “Those slumbering depths yet hold me. My eye is locked to the astral plateau that these shakes stole me from. In that vista of afterlife, I was deigned not for thee but to be with the songbird. I, of broken wing, to be with bard of shattered sword. ‘Twas he who waited for me by the threshold, the rim of timeless but unborn dream. Yet no flowering wreaths dressed our souls. Only a red tide, rising to wash over that drifting perch. Should I follow false heart to Felhenge the Hels shall seek a coronet from my head.”

“Perhaps no such vista lies for me to claim beyond this mortal perch.” Dejection rolled along Drakkon. “None that I deserve anyway. Yet let me know you again in this chance before it slips away with us in pursuit.”

Corinna sought then his eye, but her orbs gazed past his form and into the vestiges of deathlike dream. Recounting the vision which rode to her on crimson mare. “The tide claimed us. I drowned. Am still drowning. My chambers fil with waters of this coming swell. Prescience of fate ties me to it in the present. I am not yours to know fully when you know not yourself. Nor am I to touch affection again when tossed beneath those waves.”

“What rests on and writhes within these waves which we cannot overcome? That we both live is miraculous, so why not fly upon this sail? Take my hand. Let us share a ship to endure the storm.” His hand drooped towards her, seeming then a thing of wilted branch and limping pride.

“Those crests are of thunder beyond mankind’s make and mettle of defiance.” Flat whispers made the bed of her tone. Corinna’s was a dreadful apathy that left Drakkon blubbering, crestfallen. “Charnel surf consumes me. No undertow nor flimsy ‘sail’ shall pass this sea.”

“Let us hold one another. Discover a course that beats in both our breasts, no? Is there nothing I can do to restore your spirit to the frame of now.” Pleaded his desperation. “Let me hang upon a tree until all falseness flees my face and you may know this ardor as true.”

“Truly I have nothing to give. This coil of mine wrestles with touch deeper than yours might offer. O, will not this cycle simply end? Away to what doom is ordained!”

“Nothing is ordained. We might make of ourselves what we can, as you said for me.” Drakkon turned away from her, pain undulating through him, unable to reach out when pierced by her loveless words. Remnants of hope for affection implored motion of his mouth. “I aim to recant my crown. Splinter it, that the shards may rest in the hands of the many. Will you not disavow this depression to walk with me without the trappings of ruling and constricting reason. Might we share what remains of these dwindling nights? At least this one?”

Coldly she thought to herself, this is exactly the discussion I hoped to avoid. Dared death amid dream to be free of confrontation. She rolled over to the opposing side of the bed and held her head in her hands to curl down the tempest pounding there. “There is a blanket there & you’ve got your warrior’s furs. In the morning let us have tea and discuss these matters, but I must rest more. I want for solitude in the wake of all.”

The pangs overtaking his heart maimed his steps as Drakkon moved out of the bedchamber. He suppressed his tears and marched on away from his love, who appeared so menacing in her barred countenance that moment. He finished his drink and stepped outside, hearing the latch bar behind him as he stooped in sadness. In that hour he felt naught but loneliness and dejection. The wind howled with maddening laughter in his ear, mocking the demise of his core. The un-felt sensations of her fingers & lips traced him with unborn want, wandering out into cold oblivion.

The crags & chasms of a crippling moroseness engulfed his fall. In the gloom All that wailed against him drove cavity into his chest. To live at all felt at odds with desire, now so alone and aloof even when near to all he had fought for. With no damming delusions of divinity left to hold him in their arms, despair washed over him. Every wave in the wind’s arctic tide breathing fear into his lungs. Above him the moon had grown almost full and glared down at him with its silver stare. In that freezing solitude he searched for himself, hoping to grasp some threads of his being that would redeem him of the tragedy he wrought. The open air only elevated his apprehension, his doom spiraling about with every gust and Corinna’s rejection splintering his soul.

“I leap into the infinite – either to my demise or to my ascension!”

But he could not bring himself to toss his bodily prison over the battlements. There was still a faint pulse, beating through to his blood. A command funneling fire through his muscle bidding him muster strength to show worthiness of regaining her favor and a soul of his own, regardless of whether these efforts were to be rewarded with affection or deepening distance.

He collapsed along the high wall, sundered by the sounds of night. Most of the castle slept well, either from the stupor of drunkenness or sweet kiss of victory. Luminance drew down over the battlements, having forgone distracting flambeaus of flesh. Yet within the bowels of the fortress agony yet reigned through the turbulent nights. Loyalists to Mordaunt who instigated troubled were subjected to torture below, and he swore he could hear their groans stretch through dungeon cracks. He envied them the simplicity of their suffering & their endurance in the face of it.

A lone guardsman sat along the closest tower scratching poetry in his leather book and gazing out at the horizon. What thoughts did he etch by candlelight, how far were they from his Lord’s?

The moon took the throne of the sky. Something wrung his soul’s strings, a sense of imminent dread, the elaborate fortress suddenly appearing a sepulchral tomb. His whole being shivered, from cold of body but more so the freezing cyclone spinning inside. Have I enough to endure what I’ve wrought? How can I carry my head up any further without her hand beside me? I am worthless and undeserving. My darkness reflects with rejection. Showing the truth of what I am- and I am nothing special, nothing holy! Just a self-indulgent fool who could never find a hole vast enough by which to bury my shame-and myself with it!

He cursed himself, clenching his fists and battering the hard walls and his chest in self-aimed ire. Desperation became him. With every breath his lungs contract with looming doom, wrenching the pace of his heart. His own thoughts were to him the worst of companions. But he did not plunge fully into despair, leaving some faint and taunting trace of his hope still beating through his veins as the mountain winds lamented his existence.

His loathsome trance was interrupted by the opening of Corinna’s shackles as the door to her tower flung open and the pale woman appeared, flush with renewed life and with it longing. “That feeling – it’s eating away at me too…” He stumbled into her arms as they embraced, not out of some eternally budding young love and the passion that came with it, nor great calculation, but the lust of loneliness. “I had given up… Surrendered myself to death, if only to be rid of Mordaunt.” She mused, idly pulling on her pillow.

“I am learning that that is precisely when life loves to summon us to its center. Calling to push through what it pressed against you just as faith is abandoned.”

“Let us abandon all thought, but briefly. Shadows keep us from sleep and tarnished dream waits with day. But let warmth rekindle this hollow breast. Let us enjoy the silence for sparse breath.”

He joined her bedside. Slowly and initially unsurely wrapped about her waist. After several of their exhales pressed against each other, Corinna drew his hands up to her breasts. Pulse rippled between them, ephemeral yet entrancing enough to disregard their compulsions towards gloom. Blood rushed to touch her, know her once more from the inside, borne of sovereign want after endless midnight. A need to cling to someone and feel skin scrape & pull threaded fleeting arousal of bodies submerging into one another.

The door closed on the lone pair of shivering dual frames pressed upon the other. Yet for her this dance was of phantoms. Soil recoiled yet her frame rejoiced to feel another’s, shaking for escape from fleshy cell. His touch failed to fully trace her back to her body, though a distraction from the uncertainty outside. Only posing a moment as lovers to shut away the storm inside their souls through seal of sensuous shivers. Yet though he roused all feeling for her, her reciprocation slumped to corpselike posture; half-stilled, save the tremors. Sorrow shared through their pores, in the shame of this small need.

The last emerald embers died in her eyes. Gray film beheld his flailing passion. Yet in that emptiness, with gown forgone and grasped by skeletal paws of withering ardency, she found a self beyond the known. A consort of nihil, bearing meaning of nothingness; in which infinity found dreaming form. Trembling hand reached for this other inside as she waltzed with daemonic partner into penetrating void. Her mask but performed the gestures of mirth while denigration stabbed into bone & sinew. Tossed by thunder that drank up the rain. Dampened her will till it became drought, evaporating against an emperor’s enflamed final affection.