As he arrives at the walls of the Day Court, a sigh lifts from him like smoke. It is arid relief, something warm that mingles in the hot air and begs for shade. The sun is high now, high over him and the walls, the palace in the distance whose spire glimmers as it peeks from over the ridge. Sweat beads on his back, hangs like dew drops from the golden twine that sags over his mane in drooping rich cobwebs. As he raises his head the corvus skull chatters against his neck, rattling against the badger jaw and bird bones, all tousled in a breeze that is far too brief. He was born to the dry air – gasping and wheezing and begging for a soft breath in the brushland dust – but this was different. This was cloying, near suffocating. The desert sand sprayed with each gust and caught on his tongue until it was rasp and spittle, more gristle than muscle. Even in the winter Solterra offered no mercy. And yet, it was a spectacle. His eyes roved the stone walls turned gold with a touch of the sun, crept along the crags and fine lines that could hardly fit a hair between the bricks. 

Here, the shadows shrunk beneath him. They gathered in a small, rounded silhouette that hunched back from the sight of the sun, writhing and hissing in a pool of greyed sand that slithered about his hooves. The daylight bore upon him like a vengeful god, and he could not but help to loathe the place entirely on this initiation. He felt as though even the night here was unwelcome, and it could not have served him any better to return then.

No, this was now. 

Here in the merciless hot pit of monsters and death and otherwise unwarranted peril – his path was here, it was stead, it rolled out before him like a carpet unraveling at the fringes. The sun ticked over him like a damocles curse, and it grinned for his scorn. And in its challenge, he found promise. He strove again, wandering along the curves of the mammothian wall, uncertain of where their gates lied and who stood at them waiting for him with polished spears. This would not be simple. Though he doubted he smelled anymore of the incensed markets of Denocte or the heavy cologne that lingered in the Scarab, he couldn't guarantee that it was any less obvious where he had spent a year. These days lost in Solterra were just that – days, and while he smelled of the red canyon rock and antelope furs and teryr blood, devils knew one another outside of hell, and Raum was no exception. So was his pursuit straight for the throat, as always. With teeth and irons and bruises and knives – knives – what good was a warrior with no weapon? Useless here except for cunning and courage, which at times he wondered if they were just masks for foolishness. 

Each footprint stirred sand from its resting place, sifted through each labored step as the grains burned along the scrapes on his legs. The walls seemed to stretch on endlessly, and to which corner he could not devise worth wandering, every glimpse of the future was wavering in the rippling likeness of empty miles. All gold, all dancing on the horizon with the pretense of eternity (like taunting daylight tip-toeing the edge of wealth, a chance of glory on the sharp of a blade). He considered stopping a time or two, turning back and heading home with empty hands – how often did he do this? He could not remember when it was last – but the whispers that told him to do so were too willful, too arrogant not to disobey.

And then he saw it – silhouettes that broke the dancing, uncertain line between sky and sand. They fell out of the wall like crumbling bricks, hesitant and animate as they turned back to the sunlit city then scurried south. Riches, rags. They ran as if they had stolen the eye from a king. Erasmus narrowed his eyes to watch them pass over the sand, not even stopping as they spared a second to observe his shadow in the golden hot terrace. He strained to see their faces. To see if it was fear, depravity, and wondered if they even existed at all.

They dropped something as they ran and he picked his pace from a fast walk to a trot that lumbered over the soft, heaving sands. As they disappeared into the southern gold that descended into distant red, his trot moved to a canter. Perhaps he had lost his mind. Dehydrated and overheated, running was the last thing his instincts would beg of him – and they now screamed out to him like a chiding parent. His blood boiled, raking his veins with razor teeth. How dare you. But he was gone to the wares of a sensible man – he was a boy, curious and flighted to the conception of mortal blood from the golden stone. How could it? How could stone birth flesh? Was his mother right? Was he a stone that fell from a god's eye and grew like roots in the belly of a hungry serpent? 

Even curiouser, the sand glimmered with a pearlescent sheen that scowled at him from a distance now.

It broke the monotony of gold and tan and heavy hot sunlight.

It was diamonds. Hundreds. Thousands.

They did not pour from the wall but pooled as if they were a stream, a river of diamonds that fell from the wall like the bricks had been encumbered with such pressure that they split into a thousand little jewels. They spread like veins through the sand, he could see them from afar – they resembled a tributary of glistening silvery waters spilled from the sun. They did not break through the wall no, they were the wall, and now they weren't – Isra.

As he came upon them now he slowed and ran his eyes over the wealth. He remembered the way she shifted the ground beneath her. Pearls. Gold. Cinder. The way she dripped rubies and silk from a door made of mausoleum stone, an effortless press of magic that spun riches from the air. He remembered now. His eyes rose to the sky and searched out seaweed scales, serpentine shadows. There was nothing. How long was this here? How long had it been since Isra had wove her magic into the stone, and ripped from it the most precious thing it could be? Who had seen?

He crept forward, his shadow lunging from beneath him to pry at the diamonds and their glistening grins, with a grin of its own. It rustled within him, hearty and pleased. But his eyes were trained on the crater that was made, a crater that still dripped here and there with gemstones that seemed conceived right from the mortar. It resembled a geode, and he admired it as he took careful steps to its maw. 

One.
Two. The breeze stirred, a couple more plopchinkchink from the diamond-studded wall.

Three.
Four.
Five. He misstepped, a diamond slid from under his hoof and he caught himself quick, pausing.
Listen.
. . . Nothing. Five more steps.

Six.
Seven.
Eig-

A muzzle popped through the geode crater, and Erasmus froze in his steps. First a nose, then slid out a forehead, wide eyes beneath a bushy forelock whose gaze crept in awe over the tumbled riches. That was, until it fell upon the looming silhouette that was Erasmus. He was midstep, neck arched and shoulders low like a prowling wolf. And as their eyes met, one met like a hawk and the other like a timid mouse. Before a word could leap from his mouth, the stranger was gone. He closed the distance quickly now, no use for stealth when the thing would surely alarm the first soul it found to the wall that crumbled to diamonds and the dark man who stood at its border. He broke through it and took an immediate right, stole away into a path that promised the least resistance. There, somewhere in the distance there that he closed swift as flight, he found an alleyway that threw a shadow over him. The first trace of mercy that bid him any welcome. His bones eased, his blood ceased its boiling raze and lounged comfortably, soaking deeply the dark that tread over his spine like a cool bath.

He waited until he heard nothing, and then he moved on. There, the man possessed of gold veined granite slid from the alleyway and into the quiet of a village tensed with something he could not quite understand. But he sought it anyways, his ears upright and forward, open to every whisper and baited breath that tailed the breeze. Anything of quicksilver and blue, anything of Raum, anything that dared breathe of the villain king of Solterra.

His chest rises and falls with the repose of smoke lilting, a small gesture of tranquility and acceptance in a realm that offered few mercies – one, from the sun, as shadow fell across his features and filled the pits of his eyes with an impish look of wonder. Another, with the quiet that precedes the humble reaches of the village, these suspicious streets that teem with breeze and whispers as if none here knew who their neighbor truly was. Three, a manner of escape – as the alleyway he found himself in revealed itself to have only one way in, but a myriad of paths out, out into the courtyards from whence the majority of the guards had left unattended for their festive engagements, for certain watch over their hated (did some love him?) tyrant king. Erasmus himself was left to his misanthropic tendencies, away from the parade. Away from the throng of people and their carried out pandemonium that filled the glistening sandstone streets with all too much, all too great a fury of emotions. Here he would wait, he resolved, left to anonymity in the alleyways as he preferred – to listen and observe the tales the passerby held in the name of the skinwalking king. He could not tell how many streets the procession had ambled, how many more were left, how many of those guards would stand by the gates of the court, wary eyes waiting for those like Erasmus to steal past dagger in tow. But he would see. 

That is, as all he could do. He held no dagger. No sword. No bow. A hunter, a warrior without a weapon, as tragically poetic as it was, he scowled each time his elbow brushed where a hilt should be or each time a doe stomped tauntingly in the meadows while his stomach roared with its peculiar appetite. It would serve him no good to steal past them and find a certain death waiting in the halls; fortune was not meant to be founded by absolute fools, though it had a humor. He was gifted with patience, in what measure was left to be discovered, and would test it in simply waiting, in watching, in learning, and if it suit him – to leak such information to those who found it valuable. He entertained the idea of returning with such intel and relinquishing it to the use of Isra, who seemingly charged herself the lonely chore of hunting Raum herself, but the thought brought a small inkling of rebellion that crept up his spine. He preferred to see it through and did not mind the deaths that stood between them and their prey, while she would lament any innocent souls be razed by the blade for the sake of their hapless associations. To him, all was fair in war.

So it was in these intentions that he stood and waited, finding himself a perch at the end of an alleyway that offered little serenity outed from the noise in the central streets, listening to each stranger and their bits of conversation that drifted in and out of casual hours or anxious gossip that fell hushed when the found the eyes of their neighbors. Little things, mostly useless things, weatherly talks peppered with their disgruntlement toward the parade, the congregation, the dictator placed at its heart. The wrenching of such a heart, and immediate placation that came as a gasp as they looked about to be sure they were not overheard. 

Erasmus amused his eyes with trivial things at his feet or the sky, so as to seem an unimportant spectre resting just outside of their wares, nothing but a ghost looming quietly in the dark. As he is, a wraith, blossoming with purpose and a fate unsealed, a purgatory wretch who came and went as he pleased. He is dust and shadow, all that was rich about him in this instance was the stretch of gold that cracked along his shoulders, winding their veins like marbled black granite. He wore the shadows that fell across his rugged delineation like a veil, sheer and dead and cold as ever, and if any of them had thought to look his direction they may think of him as little threat to their going ons. His preference lounged in this casual still life, estranged from them as he always felt, as if he did not ever exist except as a dream, a shadow, (and perhaps in a later life, a nightmare.)

That is, he feigned this supernaturality to a point until he heard the clodding sound of hoofbeats finding him from the streets behind, a noise that broke his stagnant boredom and echoed along the high walls of the alleyway. An ear flicked back to regard its approaching gait – casual, calm, and so coolly smooth, enough that it piqued his interest to turn and observe. His new audience was a creature of no real consequence as of yet it seemed, just another bystander who found the same path and found it in him for a good stroll. Erasmus's eyes watched calculatively, almost aggressively, as was a trait too hard to break. His expression is often too much severe for a youth, too dark and sharp, pensive and wolfish. Where the boyish strands of blissful mortality veined his face in a comely ease that offered grace and handsome suavity, a presage of horror seemed to lurk in its pits and valleys, seemed to roughen its softness to fine points that gleamed with predatory feature. The older he became, the more that manner of horror changed him from a likeable boy of gracious beauty to a man of dangerous luxuriance, good looks that shifted like smoke over mirrors, rugged and somber. An underworld elegance. 

His expression loosened some when the man spoke, but he almost does not hear the words at first – they drift over him like a cloud, just barely missing his ears, listening like it were a harpsong to the decadent smoothness of eased syllables. He drank the dialect in. More followed like a cure to trance, and his eyes crept back over the quiet suburbs at their corner, the sand and dust that rolled through the nothingness like laughter. Of course he did not know what else to do. He was not from Solterra, not for but a half hour at most, and all the splendor he had witnessed was merely the crumbling wall spent with diamonds. There were no Night Markets, no Scarab to squander his stolen riches, no Pits here to scrap in. He was a stranger to all, especially to his newfound partner. But he would be a fool to state that aloud. Erasmus was careful to shirk all ties with Denocte before arriving into the heart of Solterra. His accent still held strong to the distant Wilds from whence he had been ripped from – a sharp dialect not too unlike Solterra, but a native could easily separate the odd vowels and rolling consonants. It was rougher, almost more primitive, its only saving grace being his eloquence and avidity for flowing words. He did not smell of Night Market incense, he had washed the brine from his mane, taken a dust bath in the red dirt and mingled sands just outside of the elatus crater. It served him to conceal these things when one was a suspicious character by nature.

Erasmus was not aware of who was friend or enemy in this treacherous scape. Moreso, he was not aware of the nature in which his new friend found its truth – certainly not while the villain king himself stood place at the center of the parade. Regardless, he relented nothing to what he felt could reveal, in any measure, his intentions, and donned the mask of a clueless youth effortlessly. “Not yet.” he shook his head, then swung it back as a commotion rose from the procession far behind them, a sudden fit of derogatory yelling that found itself joined by a few voices to follow, all jeering and chanting until curbed by the rush of guards. “I just wanted to step away from that,” to wait, to learn, gathering wisdom like a stone, “I've never seen someone so equally loathed and feared.” he pries gently, lifting the cover over a desirable conversation and patting it back lightly as if he couldn't truly care, he shrugs. “What is there, on a day like today? At least the guards appear occupied.” He let some whim enter his voice, a feigned childlike wonder that wrapped its way into his impish demeanor – as his eyes glistened with purpose and dare, all the while full with intrepidity that sprung from a nefarious well.

A SHADOW IN THE EYE OF THE SOLTERRAN SUN – ERASMUS IS A CURIOUS CREATURE OF DRIPPING INK AND FERVOR, A SULKING THING THAT LOOMS AND WAITS AND LISTENS - BUT O BLINDED TO REASON, TOO HOT TO THINK. TOO HOT TO CONSIDER THE TRUE NATURE OF HIS FRIEND OR FOE (OR NEITHER, ENTIRELY) THAT ITCHES BENEATH SKINS. HE CATCHES THE WHISPERS OF PASSERBY, HE WATCHES AS THEIR EYES FLIT FROM THE ALLEYWAY TO THE STREETS BEYOND, TO THE PALACE ROOFTOPS THAT REFLECT THE FULL BEARANCE OF THE SUN. IN THIS MOMENT HE IS NOTHING AND NO ONE, NAUGHT MORE THAN A SPECTRE OF CHANGEABLE SHADOWS THAT CONVENE BEYOND THE HOT GLARE OF THE HEAVENS. HE PREFERS IT, THE ANONYMITY. HE PREFERS HAVING NO NAME. AND TO DREAM, HE WOULD PREFER PERHAPS TO HAVE NO FACE. HIS IS ONE OF FAMILIARITY, IF A SOUL WERE TO KNOW IT IN PASSING – HIS FEATURES ARE DISTINCT, EVEN IN THE BLANKEST OF EXPRESSIONS, HIS IS A CHARLATAN GUISE THAT SPEAKS LEAGUES OF AMBIGUOUS MORALITY. OF QUESTIONABLE CIVILITY. IT IS EITHER A SMIRK OR A SCOWL THAT LIGHTS HIS FACE, AND THE SMIRK IS FAR MORE CONTEMPTIBLE THAN THE LATTER. IT PRESSES TO HIS LIPS WITH BOYISH TENACITY, OVERSHADOWED BY SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE VIOLENT. HUNGER FILLS THE HOLLOWS BETWEEN. 





WHEN HE BROUGHT HIS GAZE BACK TO THE STALLION, A HORN SCRAPED THE SANDSTONE LIGHTLY AND HE SLIPPED OUT FROM HIS VISIONS, BACK INTO THEIR REALITY. HIS AUDIENCE WAS A QUIET SORT CONSIDERING, AND SEEMED AMIABLE ENOUGH TO CONSIDER A TRUTH WITHOUT SCORN. WAS HE? ERASMUS CONSIDERED THE LIE. HE CONSIDERED SPITTING ON THE GROUND, CURSING THE NAME OF THEIR TYRANT, LETTING VENOM SLIP BETWEEN HIS TEETH LIKE ASH AND DUST FROM HIS LUNGS. WHAT GOOD WAS IT? “at the risk of speaking out of ignorance - i must applaud a man for seeking out his ambitions no matter the cost.” HIS EYES NARROWED, JAW TILTING SLIGHTLY AS HE LOOKED BACK OVER THE EMPTY STREETS BEFORE THEM. “why, until recently i had supposed he was some monstrous thing by infamy - some skinshifting creature of horror and dismay. but there he is, same as the rest of us. ” HE GESTURED TOWARD THE ROYAL PROCESSION, GRIN TREADING SOFTLY ALONG HIS LIPS. ONE THAT REACHED HIS EYES, THIS TIME. “i could be wrong. i'm new to solterra.”

For a moment, he likened the man to Eik. For a moment, he likened the man to a worn escapee of heroism, some stalwart brawn of golden charisma – the flickers of a patient grin, the coolness of his balanced tone. All the while he was not so particular to examine the way his grin did not alight in his eyes or the way his words did not fit his mouth. He didn't notice how the skin of altruism did not fit, how it was like canvas stretched too far over a frame that twisted in ways it could just almost reach. Ignorance survived this moment like a frail bird leapt from a cage. It was a small moment, brief and fleeting – and at once, perhaps a mistake. The pretense of neutrality seemed to all but crack and falter in those knowing eyes at the mention of ambition, as if every syllable was a jagged edge that found its ugly sound unwelcome in the man's ears. His response is cold, pinpricked with something that lay beneath the surface like teeth beneath a placid lake; and where Erasmus should shrink in the shadow of politically charged doom, his blood rises to his flesh like a warcry. When he turns his eyes to meet the grey man's, something in them has changed. They are not just the cool, even watch of a curious bystander, too deep to contemplate and too silvery to mind – they are sharp, glinting off the golden heat of the solterran sun with a thunderous liberation. Shade clouds his own, deepening against the cresecent rinds until they are just as sharp and furious, an underlying ferocity not unlike a cornered, rabid dog. He moves to the streets and our hound joins him, the invitation unnecessary.

The man sings of revenge and Erasmus does not flinch at the tune of the song or the way it stops abruptly, not the way his words breathe against the air hot as iron and thick as the thrum of wardrums. It is familiar to him. It is comforting. It is the passion, the rising hotness of rage and vile and the treachery of one tongue against its own pleading gentleness – he walks and listens, and every step is one harder than the last; rougher, heavier, more calculated and tense until his every edge is grating with electricity, bounding and ravenous and curved with a blade's hunger. The hair at the base of his neck prickle slightly, and he cannot help the way the arch of his neck bows in the feral way a wolf acknowledges his opponent. The parade is lost to them now, the hiss of its pandemonium lost to latter streets that fade and bustle with the final hurrahs of a dismissed chaos. All that lay before them now is a village of sideways glances and famished mouths hollowed at the base, dry tongues that rasp with whispers and ribs that rise from the dust and decay. Every eye is a hollow shine of death that falls upon him with greedy remorse. 

Perhaps a better man would loosen his grip on his satchel. Perhaps a better man would pluck one of the golden faces of a penny and press it tight to the hold of a starving child. Perhaps a better man would look upon the sallow expressions and sympathize, maybe even falter, collapse at the sight of such deprivation with a willingness to repent. Erasmus is not a better man. He does not know the warm swell of pity that wells up in a better man's throat until it is a knot, a metamorphosis into the better word and a monologue to save what lapses of humanity lay in the cracks of impoverished, empty souls. He sees weakness, sickness, sadness, and all the lesser entanglements of those too shy to rise above themselves. He sees himself, the battered colt with his black eyes and churning stomach, bruised ribs and sprained hock. He sees the dry moors in the midst of a drought, the bones and shrapnel of villages too like this sheltered street to admit anything but their own defeat. He remembers hunger. And he remembers retribution.

The stallion's words have almost all fallen to a hum in his ears, some uncomfortable drone that winds and wheezes and rises and falls, but scrapes its final moments to manifest the words in hindsight. He is too busy watching the boy inhale his pastry. A better man's eyes should be filled with dread and mercy. His are dark, quivering, cruel. To him, war is war by any extent – and a king, tyrant, villain or otherwise horrific beast of a sovereign, does not starve his ranks except with reason. And when Erasmus turned his eyes back to the stallion, he searches those wildfire eyes to see if he knows this. He searches for that dread and mercy, and that is the only abhorrence to him. He has heard the Solterrans chastise their king, praise their fallen Queen. They did not accept a leader who has rightfully claimed his crown in sweat and blood. Why should they not claim their allegiance in their own sweat and blood? Was success not often marked in hardship?

He turned his eyes from the boy with sticky lips to the man with a feasting tongue. There was a pause there, one long enough that allowed the snarling, roaring, contemptible thing at the pit of Erasmus's core to lurch wearily up the hollow of his throat. “the act of revenge is ambitious. but why revenge?” his voice is not so smooth either, in the venomous utterance. it is a low growl just above the tone of a hiss - it is fanged, it is ruthless, possessed with a diplomacy that is but a stone's throw from barbarism. he looked back to the child that is following them now, his cheeks greyed but plump with hope for another pastry or better - and erasmus wards him away silently with a toothy snarl that wrinkles his nose and folds in cracks below his sharp eyes, distorting handsome features for a maleficent display of predatory menace.

It is then that the resonance of his name catches him with a feeling too much like a pebble dropped to the bottom of a watery tomb. The heat that pulsed against his delineation falls back against itself in the small utterance, too casual and coincidental for it to be a mistake, a cognate, some slip of the tongue. For a moment he is cold, and the shadows slick across his spine like thin, tired vipers, nipping for his ears. His gaze struck back to the grey fellow with a rebounding terseness, as if it was an insult that a stranger could dare speak his name unbidden. Suddenly, the heat rises with a doubled fervor, and his entire body could burn with ardent flames had it the means to combust – his arterial composition thrummed with a thunderous hum, high and hot and almost too sharp. His mind rested a hand where a dagger once strapped behind his shoulder, but it is empty and cold and the realization should be frightening but instead it is infuriating. He made long, sweeping strides to cut his companion off, almost shouldering him into an adjacent alleyway that whistled with the breeze. “who are you?” his eyes are daggers. his titan blood is fire.

HAD ERASMUS PAUSED TO CONSIDER THE PROSPECTS OF REVENGE UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THIS SUDDEN EPISODE OF UNNAMED DEFEAT, HE MAY HAVE CAUGHT THE WAY THE NUANCE OF LOVE WAS UTTERED SO HEAVILY, SO PRECARIOUSLY, THAT IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN COINCIDENCE. THAT THE WAY IN WHICH IT TOMED LIKE A BELL OF A SILVER TONGUE COULD HAVE INFLUENCED THE MOST SULLEN OF MARTYRS, COULD HAVE DRIVEN A SPELL OF CURIOSITY FROM THE HEART OF ROMANTICS. THAT REVENGE COULD BE PORTRAYED AS SOMETHING SO SELFLESS, AND WHOLLY SELFISH, SO AS TO PROCURE ITS MEASURE IN THE NAME OF LOVE. FOR WHAT? ERASMUS COULD HAVE CONSIDERED THE WORD AND ITS NATURE, AND WITH TOO FEW LOFTY ATTEMPTS TO UNDERSTAND HOW REVENGE COULD BE WARRANTED BY SUCH – HE WOULD BE LEFT AT A LOSS. HE WOULD THINK OF THE WORD, OF THE NOTION, AND TRY HIS BEST TO EMPATHIZE WITH THE CADENCE. BUT WHEN LOVE IS SOMETHING THAT IS MENTIONED INTO THE CRAGS AND THE CRACKS OF THE SHADOWS OF HIS MIND, THERE ARE ONLY TOOTHY PRECISIONS OF WHAT IT COULD MEAN. LUST, MAYBE. OR THAT FEELING YOU HAD WHEN YOU WERE TUCKED CLOSE TO YOUR MOTHER, SCABBED AND BRUISED AND WORN, COVERED IN THE BLOOD OF ANOTHER COLT. IT WAS THE WARMTH, THE SECURITY, AND THE LAPSE OF FEAR THAT CAME FROM KNOWING THERE WAS ONLY COLDNESS BEYOND THAT SPACE. 

ERASMUS, IF HE CHOSE TO DWELL ON THE IDEA, MAY HAVE THOUGHT TO THE MOMENT HE RAN WILD THROUGH THE BRUSH WHILE HIS MOTHER'S ACHING SCREAMS CAME TO AN AWFUL GURGLING AND TO SILENCE. HE WOULD TRY, TRY TO THINK OF WHAT HE FELT THEN, IF IT WAS LOVE. IF IT WAS A DESIRE FOR REVENGE, IN THE NAME OF LOVE. HE WOULD REMEMBER DEVISING A PLOT TO RETURN AND GUT THE CHIEFTAN AND HIS CORRUPTED ADVISORS. BUT HE COULD NOT RECALL THE INKLING OF LOVE. HIS MOTHER WAS A NECESSARY MARTYR, AND SHE KNEW THIS. INDEED, HE HAD ONCE CONSIDERED REVENGE – BUT IT A SELFISH NOTION HE COULD SUPPOSE, A REVENGE AGAINST THE CORRUPT SYSTEM THAT HAD WITHHELD THEM FROM THE WISDOM OF SAGES WHO ONLY WANTED PAWNS.

HE DID NOT CONSIDER IT, HOWEVER. HE LET THE BURDEN OF THE WORD SLIP FROM HIS MIND AS SOON AS IT SLID OVER THE EMPTY SPACE WHERE A BLADE SHOULD HAVE BEEN. HE DOES NOT THINK OF LOVE OR BETRAYAL OR DEFEAT. THE CROWD HAS NOW FILTERED INTO THE ONCE QUIET BACK STREETS FROM THE FINALE OF THE PARADE, EACH FACE A BLUR OF DIRTY SCOWLS AND DESPERATE SADNESS THAT HOLLOWS SOCKETS DEEP. THEY ARE PILLARS OF SALT AND DUST IN HIS PERIPHERAL, AND ALL HE CAN THINK ABOUT IS THE WAY THIS MAN'S SKIN SHIFTS AND PEELS INTO THE SPROUTING OF GREAT, HEAVING WINGS. THE WAY ITS PALLOR CLEAVES FOR METALLIC SHEEN, AND THE WAY THE QUICKSILVER GLIMMERS IN THE BEAMING SUNLIGHT. AND THOSE BLUE, BLUE EYES THAT WATCH HIM WITH A MOROSE AMUSEMENT, AND THE CREEPING SUDDENNESS OF ABHORRENCE THAT POISONS HIS BLOOD WITH A FURIOUS HEAT. 

THEY RUN. THOSE HIDEOUS FACES AND DISJOINTED PATRONS OF SQUALOR, OF DEPRAVITY, OF POVERTY. THEY SHRIEK, THEY GASP, THEY FALL BACK AGAINST THEMSELVES AND POINT THEIR NOSES TO THE SKY THAT HAS BEEN BLOTTED WITH THE SHADOW OF THEIR TYRANT KING. ERASMUS STANDS STILL AS THE WIND WHIPS THE SAND FROM ITS RESTS AND BRUSHES CRUDELY OVER HIS SKIN LIKE RAKES, AND HE BEHOLDS. THE TERROR OF A SKINWALKER. THE HORROR OF A TYRANT KING. HE BEHOLDS THE WAY THE SHADOWS FALL BETWEEN HIS RIBS, OR THE WAY THAT SOME SHALLOW MADNESS LEAKS INTO HIS SUNKEN SOCKETS, THE GRANDEUR OF HIS WINGS THAT SEEM AT THE TIME TOO BIG, TOO MAGNIFICIENT. 

RAUM INVITES HIM TO SPEAK OF HIS FABLED REVENGE. BUT ERASMUS LOOKS ON AT THE EMPTY SPACE WHERE HE HAS ONCE HOVERED, AND WATCHES THE FEATHERS DRIFT DOWN, DOWN LIKE A RAIN OF ASH. HE TURNS BEFORE THE LAST FEATHER DRIFTS SADLY TO THE SLATE STREET, AND HE KNOWS THAT HE WILL NEVER RETURN TO PROD A MADMAN ABOUT AMBITIONS OR REVENGE OR LOVE.

finite.