Maybe, I have always been this hungry. Maybe, the world and all that is within it has never been enough to satiate me. The wind is cool, almost refreshing, in my face; I close my eyes against it and focus on the stinging sensation of my own hair lashing at my cheeks. I do not want to take ownership of the decisions that have led me to this land; I do not want to acknowledge my own role in my condemnation. 

I am in Dusk for Elena. I am there to inquire about the medical—or magical—potentials to undo what has been done. 

I do not have much hope in her answer and for that reason I am no hurry to receive it. 

Sereia did what she could, I suppose, to repair the wounds. My throat is bound tightly in cloth; my shoulder is packed with natural salves. They smell sweet and earthy, and this odor nearly disguises the newfound saltwater tang of my skin. 

Yet, I do not want to think of Sereia. I do not even want to think of Elena and what she might do to heal me. I want to think of nothing, and that is how I find myself on Praistigia Cliffs with a drink in hand. I am a soldier, it seems; and I have by now visited Terrastella enough I am not entirely out of place, especially for a festival. I begin to drink to drown my hunger. I begin to drink, to soften my sharpness. I begin to drink because there is nothing left to do.

(I had sworn, once, to Bondike that we would never be our fathers; I had promised it; and he had agreed, it was because we would always have one another). 

It was a fool’s promise. 

Every man is alone; there is no one there when our desperation most seizes us, or it would not be desperation. There is no one to save us from ourselves, and the damage we might wreck.

I have always been this hungry, I think, with the wind in my face. 

I have always needed the world to burn. 

And finally, finally, the world has burned me back. I am left changed. I am left so damaged I do not know who I am. My new teeth fit strangely in my mouth. The more I drink, the less I know how to sheath them, the more I begin to bleed. 

I am fully drunk by the time I step to the edge and think of how far I had once fallen—I am fully drunk, and swaying, beneath the stars when I ask myself, 

How much further do I have to fall? 

There is music and conversation behind me; but the edge lures me with a siren's song. I step through the tall grasses, drink in hand, until there is nothing but open space beneath my gaze. The ocean, I see her; and she roars. 

Here, I am alone, on the edge, the taste of sugar and mint and blood in my mouth. Here, the conversation cannot reach me. It doesn't matter. Words could not fill me now. 

(What I hate the most is the way that, even from the precipice, the sea calls me. And she is laughing; that steady, rhythmic pull and tug is bright and high and hopeful. She is laughing, because now I am hers. She is laughing, because revenge is the sweetest drink of all). 

In this moment, I think there is nothing left. 

I have spent a lifetime trying to fill my hollow pieces with other aims. With men, or with war. 

Now, those hollow pieces are filled with everything I have ever hated. I finish the drink and, with ludicrous anger, throw it from the cliffside into the sea. It is a small, meaningless revolt.

I am still hungry.

I am still alone. 

I am still everything I hate. 

When I close my eyes, it nearly feels like falling. When I close my eyes, I could be anywhere, with just a moment of creativity. It is not so difficult to imagine me standing upon the precipice of a different cliff, on the eve of battle, somber and prepared. As a younger man, I had done that often—I had stood on the edge and imagined everything that might unfold in the sands beneath me. 

Now, there is only the crash of water against rocks. Now, there is only what I know to be a certain kind of ending, a crossroads in my life—

I am aware I am not alone because I can smell her before I can see her. It is the hunger, I think, that makes the odor of warm flesh so evident; a bit like sweat, and sand, and the baking earth beneath a too-hot sun. She smells inexplicably of Solterra and it is the predator within me made ware of this; it is the predator within me that refuses to be caught unawares, that choruses in my stomach and my blood, that cries out for a salve to this insatiable hunger—

She is the last person I expect to find me; and in many ways, the last person I want to. The somberness of our last encounter remains fresh and distinctive in my mind; the way she reminded me so starkly of someone else, of someone’s name I do not want to give power to, not here, not now—

And, like that, like flint striking steel—I decide that she is the only person who should find me, because she reminds me of that someone else. 

She stands, at first, in quiet. She does not offer anything except for her presence. The two of us face the sea, and I have at last opened my eyes. I regard her from the corner of them, briefly, before returning my attention to the thrashing water below. 

What’s wrong? 

I do not know how to answer, at first. Whatever I might say seems too large; and anyways, when I open my mouth to speak it at first seems too difficult to do so. She is not a woman I want to appear unintelligent in front of—and while I understand I owe her no explanation, there is a tangible relief to be asked.

“I—“ I begin. My voice is thick with alcohol, but not slurred. “I spent a lifetime hunting something…I have now become.” 

I should have died. 

“I didn’t.” I say this aloud, without meaning to, and quickly amend: “I should have died, and I didn’t. I was meant to die.” 

I was meant to know nobility. I was meant to have my bones charred by a funeral pyre, my soul sent up to the heavens in billows of smoke. Instead, I am here, on a cliffside, pretending not to hear the way the sea sings or the way I hunger so viciously.

"I would have rather died, I think." At this, my voice is quiet. At this, I think of how my father once told me the only way for a warrior to end is gutted on a beach, a sword still within reach. 

I have always lost myself in others. I have always turned to them when I could no longer tolerate myself. With this bitter, sharp thought Adonai’s mind comes to mind—and then a long list of others. There is Cillian, and Dagda, and all of those from before. 

(Or should I call them after? Because there had been Bondike, and then there had been after). 

My sense of purpose had always stemmed from my duty; and my identity had been tied to that, too. Without my sense of duty, without that purpose, I have been nothing for a very long time. Perhaps this had simply been the final—nearly merciful—cut. 

Now, I have no purpose and no self. 

Now, everything I have ever understood is irrevocably changed. 

I know I will drive myself mad to continue down this path of thought. And, besides, my drunkenness makes it difficult to focus on such concrete concepts. Instead, I focus on the feeling; the feeling that wells inside of me as angrily as the sea in a storm. I feel it rut at the edges of my soul; it fills my eyes and my mind and my body, until I am nothing, nothing, nothing.

The universe must be laughing. 

No. You shouldn’t have died. I felt the same way for a… long time, but there is no such thing as should have died—you either live or you die. There is nothing else but that. 

How can she understand? My eyes snap toward her and my expression is venomous; it is the expression of a viper, of a rattlesnake, of a cobra. Detached, and cold; nearly reptilian. How could she know, what it meant to become the thing you had hunted, had spent a lifetime trying to destroy? How could she know what it felt to touch the gates of death and then walk back, unharmed? Anyone else, anyone else would say be grateful, be hopeful, I had my life! 

But this wasn’t my fucking life.

I won’t tell you that you survive for a reason. I don’t believe in things like fate anymore—not in higher purpose, not that we suffer as a part of a greater plan. But I do know that we choose what we do with every terrible thing. What matters is the choosing. 

And what choice is there?

Even now with my bloodshot eyes and the taste of whiskey on my tongue, I can smell her.

Even now, with the sea and the festival, I can smell her. 

Perhaps, to some, this would be a small detail. But to me it no longer is. I can smell the Solterran sun on her, and the sands; I can smell desert sage and clean sweat. But more importantly—most importantly—I smell her as a predator smells prey. As a creature of flesh as blood. As something to be devoured. And although I do not act on it—do not even think of acting on it—the hunger is there. And, even without the hunger, now there exists a subconscious awareness of the life around me; a constant sharpening; a need for the sea; a need to consume. 

She does not look away from me, however. No matter the coldness of my disposition. No matter the strange, uncontrollable twitching at the edge of my too-long mouth.

“There is no changing this.” I answer, but then I am quiet. Her words are difficult to digest; and I am desperate for them, in my own way. I am desperate for someone to look me in the eyes and to say what she has said; to remind me there is a choice. “The problem is the becoming—I was changed. I can’t go back, I don’t even know how to go forward.” 

I don’t know what else to be, if not the man I was before. There had never been a choice in who I was; how can there be a choice now? 

Her eyes will not leave me. They remain transfixed; attentive; bordering just beyond polite intrigue into something deeper, more intense. She does not seem like the type of woman capable of half-measures, of indifferences. All, or nothing. This clearly isn’t nothing. 

And so, I listen. I listen to her. From how she speaks, I do not think she can be much older than me, or not older at all. It is difficult to tell in Novus, a land of magic and immortals. But still, I listen. As a girl, I was… taken.

I wonder if it is cathartic, to share a story of one’s own life when someone else suffers the story of their life. I listen. I listen, but it is different. She tells me a story of war. It is a story that has been told many times and will be told many times again. Of children, suffering the sins of that war. 

I listen, but I do not look at her. I look at the sea, and in my mind’s eye I create a map of her scars. 

Each one, earned for some atrocity. Each one, given to her through abuse. But she and I, we are different. I can hear the regret in her voice. When I look at her, there is a somberness to my expression; a depth that is as cruel and dark as the sea. 

There are some things in my life I regret. But the war, the killing, is not one of them. Men will always wage war. They will always need it—and the difference here is she speaks of something done to her, something of which she had no control. She speaks of wanting to die, but—

“You never became the thing you wanted to kill,” I respond. It is now that I look at her, and not the sea. It is now that I level her with my too-clear eyes despite the whisky on my breath. “Even when others died for you—even then… you were never the man you wanted to kill.” 

My lip twitches again. There is something rising within me, something that is volatile; I recognize it all too well and it is almost a relief when it comes. The man within me that roils like a beast; the man that bares his teeth and laughs and refuses to be loved. (There is a part of me that cannot help but wonder if this happened because I had grown soft—that this fate befell me not because it was destiny, but because it was punishment. I had become soft. Elena, she had made soft. Elliana, soft. Adonai, soft). “I hope you found that cathartic,” I say, wryly. 

Then: I laugh. The sound lacks mirth. It is cutting, too-loud. I laugh, and laugh, and laugh. “Do you think any of us get to choose, what happens after?” My eyes are narrowed. “There’s two choices. Live, or die. That’s it. But I have watched myself become the very thing I spent a lifetime killing. There is no choice, no. We never choose what happens to us.” 

I have already thought of how, in life’s own way, this must be my penance. The sea would not let me die; she was not done with me, not yet. I have already thought of how this is for a lifetime of judgement, of malice, and then; I remember I am only one son of the island. I remember that what happens to me is irrelevant, in the grand scheme of everything else. I have no destiny that matters. 

I am only a man turned into a monster. I am only more alone than I have ever been. And she stands besides me with the nerve to tell me a story of honor, of duty, of sacrifice. (There had never been any of those virtues, not in my story). “You became a queen,” I say, sourly. “I became the damned.”