Marisch washed his hands.

The dirt, the grime, the years upon years of spilled blood caking them. He hated them. He hated all of it. All Marisch wanted was happiness, to be loved, to be respected. To be like his loyal and loving subjects. He thought himself a fair and honest man. Why couldn’t he have that?

Wash, wash, wash. Scrub, scrub, scrub. It just won’t go. Must be clean. Can’t let the others see!

He scrubbed under his fingernails, chipped and broken. “So uneven, so unclean. It stays like the sickness of those cursed lepers,” he growled. His innocent and quiet voice, overcome by the guttural sound of a trapped and threatened beast. One of his nails popped off, a black liquid pooling in the corners of its former housing. “Must be clean, must all be clean,” he hummed. The ordinarily light, golden skin of his hands now bright red and flaking off in chunks. He continued scrubbing.

“Pain, pain, go away. Come again another day. Marisch just wants to go out and play.” The coarse, and usually off-white rag, now stained with dark red and black, the edges of it tattered and frayed. “Though his friends have all gone away, still, he wishes to see them!” He continued humming his own private tune, lost in a world of his own making. He continued scrubbing.

The skin of his hands peeling away, and yet he was numb to the pain he thought he should feel. The pewter washbowl was becoming crimson… again. “Oh, no, no! That just won’t do. Must be clean. Have to be clean. Can’t let the others see,” he shook his head left and right and pursed his lips, clicking his tongue like he was scolding a small child. His lips cracking as he spoke, “Sarasvati, my dear,” he called, his voice ripe with disappointment and melancholy.

“Yes, my liege,” came the voice of a young woman appearing in the doorway of his brightly lit chambers.

Sarasvati had been left-over from a family who had long served Marisch after they had disappeared. One day they were here, the next *Poof!* They were gone. Marisch didn’t know where they had disappeared to, but he hoped they were doing well. Such a shame to leave their daughter behind; she was such a pretty young thing. Her dark crimson hair was tied in a sideways braid, stretching across the back of her head. Voluminous wavy strands of hair dangled perfectly, framing her oblong face and emphasizing the girl’s large diamond-shaped eyes—her irises burning like the dying coals of a winter fire.

“Ah-ha! There you are! Oh, you’re quite sneaky! So sneaky! I do like that about you. Oh yes, I do like that, a lot!”

He thrust his hands into the air with gleeful, childish delight—water and blood spraying like a fanfare of confetti. The pewter bowl wobbled and shattered onto the ceramic tile below, breaking into six pieces. Marisch ambled towards the maiden, unperturbed by the broken washing bowl as his slippered feet shuffled and kicked the large fragments surrounding him.

“It seems I may have overdone it,” He laughed with the simplicity of a child, showing off his hands to his mother. Several layers of skin had mostly been peeled away, leaving behind discolored welts, blisters, and rashes that decorated his hands like the sores on a cadaver.

Sarasvati nodded her head, “So it seems, my liege,” as she clumsily reached into her tiny satchel, pulling out a well-used, almost barren, roll of bandages. Slowly and carefully, with the precision of a trained surgeon, she began wrapping them around Marisch’s hands. All while he hummed his happy tune.

“How is your family, Sarasvati? Have you heard from them lately? I sure do miss their smiling faces. I sure do miss them a lot. How are they doing?” He bobbed his head, barely listening to her response if she responded at all. Wash, wash, wash. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Such a fun game awaits for me. A tight squeeze brought him back.

“Is everything okay, Lady Sarasvati?” He noticed the trembling in her hands. “Oh, I hope I didn’t upset you. That just won’t do. It won’t do, at all!” he clicked his tongue, dropping his head in disappointment with himself. He didn’t like upsetting her. Marisch really liked Sarasvati. He had known her for ages.

Ages. A pang of burning revelation pierced his skull like a molten needle. Ages.

The word echoed throughout the depths of his innermost thoughts—a flash of white. A little girl with ginger hair and freckles played in the gardens. Flash. Her mother. Silver and orange eyes with copper skin, smiling and laughing with the little girl. Intense, burning, splintering pain. What about her father. Her father… A white light blinded him and, in turn, burned him from the inside out.

“Father!”

Marisch clung frantically at his head, shutting his eyes with such force, he felt like someone had shoved them deeper into their sockets. The memories? Visions? Burned. It all hurt so much.

“Pain, pain go away,” he cried, trying to encapsulate the tune again. He was failing. He didn’t recognize his voice. It was shaky, more akin to the whimper of a puppy than a stream of grandeur, “Come… again… another- Make it stop, please make it stop! I don’t want this anymore! Leave me be!”

The last thing he felt was the sudden drop as he collapsed to the stonework below.

When he came to, Marisch found himself in bed, propped up against the wooden headboard, and a tepid rag on his forehead, with barely any moisture left in it. He assumed what was there now was caused by the sweat on his brow. The room around was no longer bright and cheery as he remembered seeing moments before, ‘Was it moments?’

The bright gilded patterning of the floor tiles and wall panels were fading, yet still not in a state of disrepair. Everything looked… worn and lived in. The high-vaulted ceiling he remembered as a bright white plaster was taking on the color reminiscent of old cream or oat milk. He reached up to remove the rag, his hands were wrapped in what he assumed used to be white bandages, now they were the color of blackened rust, and a dull, continuous throbbing seemed to be emanating from them.

As he rose to straighten himself, he felt a light pressure hold him tenderly, deciding not to fight it, he followed the hand to its keeper. Next to him sat a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length hair tied in a sideways braid across the back of her head, a crimson and smokey-grey gradient. Wrinkles and age-lines etched her face like spiderwebs, the innocence of youth vanishing beneath the hard lines as if they had been carefully carved by a master sculptor. The kindness and worry that now softened her gaze as she attended him tugged at his memory. A moment of clarity overcame the Immortal, cleansing the sludge's taint and murk sullying his consciousness. It was like someone had stuck his head under a running spout of icy water from the Northlands after being held under the swamps of Elmora for eons.

On her cheeks were the stains of the woman’s saliant tears. Marisch reached out to her as if delicately plucking a plum from its branch. He felt his own tears dot the brim of his eyes as he graced her cheek, rubbing his thumb under her chartreuse eyes, drying away the remaining tears and wiping clean the salt that had remained behind to defend its home. At first, the woman flinched at the light touch of his hand but ultimately began to relax, tenderly embracing and leaning into his palm.

“You look so much like your mother, Hephaestus. If only Sarasvati were still here to see how much you’ve grown, my child. I’m so sorry,” His sorrowful gaze returned to the crusty wraps on his hands, and he sighed, leaning back against the headboard and its intricate hand-carved lotus designs that had been softened and rounded with age. “My mind is failing me more oft now,” He turned back to her, feeling his heart sink. “For how long was I held captive this time?”

There was a long pause as she stared at the ground, and he gazed on—her silence sounding volumes, like the trumpets of a court processional.

“Two moons,” she said, her voice a myriad of pain and simplicity.

Her words swallowed Marisch, leaving him cold with the realization. “Two Moons? That long?” He placed his hands on the mattress and braced himself to stand, flashing a kind smile to a tightly wound Hephaestus in reassurance. “Relax, my child. I believe this old man is still capable of getting himself out of bed unaided,” The tension in her shoulders dropped like a leaden weight, managing to force a small worry-stricken smile that failed to escape the bounds of her tightly clasped, cherry-hued lips.

“These fits are becoming more and more prevalent, and lasting longer,” He mumbled, his voice barely audible in the surrounding void of his thoughts. “ I need to find a solution.” His head felt swollen like his mind was trying to escape the confines of its organic cage.

To ease, or rather escape—if that was even possible—the pulsing sensation, Marisch took to pacing, doing his best to avoid the shattered washbasin in the corner of his room. He knew what he would see, and his body convulsed at the thought. He could still hear the ravings of his own dementia plastering the hollows of his mind, Wash, wash, wash. Clean, clean, clean… It made him weak, his hands—or what was left of them—howl in pain and his stomach churn. He was losing this battle, and he needed to find a solution or risk losing everything.