Bernard had done as he was asked.
The Elysium stood idle, a vacant tavern whose insides writhed with dust and pallid moonlight, squandering its wash over glistening bottles and the smooth wood arches of the ceiling. The fireplace, quite cleanly, sat undisturbed in the corner, talentless in the shadows that filled the alcove. The bar was swept and polished beneath a veneer of the sifting white particles that drifted in the pouring light. Sleeves of tobacco sat contained in bright boxes leering from a corner, smothered out of where day could possibly reach. All had been in order, even the sign that marked the place closed for renovations. Had Bernard obeyed all the requests made for him, even the entrance to the catacombs had been boarded and patched into nonexistence, and a sizable quantity of wealth removed from its bowels.
As the Night Markets bustled to life and lanterns cast their glow upon the streets, the Elysium remained dark and quiet as it had for months. For a year.
Its reflections, dark and hollowed with facades of the neighboring venues, shifted with each drift of wafting moonlight that filtered through the western windows. A galaxy revealed in its depths, as particles of dust, paled lunar specks, flecked the inner pane and pricked like countless stars in a canvas of night. It is subtle brilliance, each clever star captured in a net of shadow, in which all things beyond swam aimless and fleeting. At its heart rested a black hole, burnished with hunger and dying suns, filtered with wrath and mortal contempt – silhouetted in the broad, silvery pane, inward peered the thing with burning bright moons for eyes.
Erasmus – or what very much resembled – stood quietly on the walk, motionless and musing. It was a hard road here for the thing that stared on into the depths of the only thing it knew of this place; for there was more encountered than dark stars and fading suns, for shallow ocean crypts of glassy blooms and rocks, monumental titans of graphite, which sang off pitch of the end of the end of ends. There was not the whim of planetary storms and the ageless cadence to ruin, or the marvel of celestial things who, to the unsuspecting eye, devoured one another like crashing heavenly bodies. There was only pain and labor here, in a world much more carnal and uninviting; the air was hostile, oxidizing, loathing of each inhabitant. It had been a struggle to remember to step, to walk, to fly, and even worse had been the pursuit of more tangible things. Hunger.
It burned in him now like festering warmth that raked itself up and down the bounds of his belly and struck the rind of his ribs. This thing, this thing, that was too much like sparking comets and rivulets of molten sunlight and not enough like Erasmus, like a boy who did not know how to be a boy, knew the worst of it all was such a pang. In fact, a spattering of ichor had matted the softness of his hair which he could see now, filtering sanguine in the bask of lunar glow, and he – almost hesitantly, or begrudgingly, or even unsuredly, like a foal learning its own feet – took tentative care to untangle the tendrils of gold and black stained with carmine, seemingly casual to brush out the metallic ore were it another film of soot.
To those who had known Erasmus well enough, this thing, or the shadow of it, appeared much disheveled in comparison. His mane of thick dark hair caught its waves out of line, some fore threads wrapped haphazardly over a horn, the rest dull with road dust and sea salt. His coat was diminished of its sheen by a glaze of dust and the brilliance of his gold veins dampened even in the beaming glow. But it could see this now, beheld to the memory of what an Erasmus should resemble were he suspended in the reflection of an Elysium window – feral but composed, smooth curves and sharpened angles that gave much to the unique handsomeness that consumed him. It corrected itself accordingly; straightening the spine and roughing the edges, untangling the few fibers from his spiraled horn.
That had done it, almost.
It sought deeper, like taloned fingers clawing through a library of thoughts, feelings, and memories, singling each portion of what was with fervency. There were smaller details that needed attended to. The way he did not often let his tail droop at such an angle, or how his mane, though never cut, fell in a line against the right side of his nape, or the subconscious manner in which he tended to show the left side of his face more than the right when speaking to others. There was much to be done yet – and the line of its lips settled into an empty response, not entirely knowing the expression of disappointment.
