“I am going to war.” This is the first time it's ever sounded so simple, those words, that purpose, this fury. I. Am. Going. To. War. There is no story in telling it this way, no beauty, no wonder, no love. Each word tastes different on my tongue, not like fermented fruit. It tastes like iron and gore, wrath and rage, victory and conquest.
This might be the first time I have ended a story before I had begun it. I like it. I like the way that I am more an end than the horizon, than the darkness, than death. I love it as much as I know that there is a man across the sea who will hate it.
And I will etch his hate in arrow blades across his throat. I will carve his end into him like I've carved a million stories into the streets of Denocte. I will tell my end over and over again until a hundred evil men turn to ash.
“Maybe I've always been going to war. Maybe it's way of fate to make weapons out of every hopeful thing in the world.” I laugh and I know it doesn't sound as bitter as it should. It vibrates on my tongue like freedom, like wine, like every kiss I've ever shared with Eik. I am vibrating, and humming, and exploding into my own universe. I wonder if this is how worlds are made, by girls cut over and over again until the start to bleed moonlight and magic instead of blood. Maybe this how is everything is made by way of violence and sorrow.
“Before I came to Novus I was a slave in a world far from our shores. I had a different form there. I was as golden as the dawn until a general tried to cut it from me. There I was one out of thousands of slaves that bled, and suffered, and cried for salvation every day.” Of course there are a hundred more parts to the story, a million more drops of blood, an eternity of tears. I don't tell her the rest.
The rest of the story does not matter now. Only the end matters.
Only me.
“I'm going to start with that world because there is no one else to save them but me.” My smile is a god's smile, a star's smile, a smile as sharp and wicked as the tips of Fable's wings. Maybe she can see the ache of leaving in my eyes. Maybe she can only see the flicker of flames and the rumble of thunder falling upon a shrine. Maybe she can see a good-bye twisted with the promise that I'll be back.
He already killed me once.
I will not die again. I cannot die, I am a promise.
Her fire, her perfect circle of fire, dies where I walk through it, because where I walk there is only a stone tunnel leading through the flames and nothing for her magic to consume. I hardly pause to look back at her and her fury that begs mine to stay and devour this world first. “If you follow me I can show you my ship.” And when I continue onward the earth around me turns to brick and blade, lash and chain.
Beneath our hooves is everything I am the end of.
@Morrighan
