”I…" her voice breaks the darkness as once’s face breaks the water at a baptism. "Gods, Z-Zayir… he—“
The silence that stretches after her comment takes on the shape of magnanimity, of absolutism, of something larger-than-life. It is the oppression of their condemnation; their imprisonment; their lost years. Zayir’s mouth is dry. He thinks of how he would like to be anywhere else; anywhere except this moment, where the feral look in her eyes expresses everything that writhes within himself.
“I know.” And he does. He knows the madness; he has danced with it in this same dark tomb. He has laid in a crypt next to the creeping insanity of endless time; a death like life, or a life like death. He knows, as the blood pools wide enough around the corpse that it touches his ichor-gold hooves. Solis help us… Zayir… they’re all dead, aren’t they? He knows of whom she speaks; he had not allowed himself to grieve it until he had found her, dead or alive, and when she says it it is like a dam breaking. The floodwaters of grief rage in his heart; heavily, Zayir says, “Yes. They’re all dead.”
I looked for you.
Zayir thinks, and I failed you. The thought does not emerge pragmatic, but swathed in rage. He wishes briefly, furiously, her blade had found him rather than Halim.
But he deserved a heavier sentence for allowing this to happen.
The only way to respond to her awakening is with hard facts, Zayir decides. It is the only way to keep his own emotions at bay, even as they circle, scenting the blood in the water.
“I have only been awake for a few days… so far, it’s only myself, Hälla, Cairo and Sobec.” The names are dust on his lips; too dry. He finds, when he speaks them aloud rather than recounting them in memory, they are too few. They had been halfway to a regiment when they were entombed; enough of them to overthrow Zolin, had they been deft enough, had subservience not been instilled in them as fucking infants—
He clears his throat. The only way he can regard her in this place where he died is with apathy and clear eyes; he tries to remove himself, tries to quell the elations he is alive with the fact so many remain undiscovered.
“We haven’t found them yet.” Zayir admits; he steps closer. They have never been a pair for intimate touches, for comradeship borne close; but Zayir now offers the brush of his shoulder, a strained gesture that suggests the tumultuous conflict he feels beneath. He would like to admit, But it doesn’t matter. It was me. It was my fault. I should have seen it—
Doing so seems selfish in this dark moment. So Zayir does not. He holds his tongue and says instead, “But I suspect they were entombed with us. They were too powerful, and too hard to turn to pawns. Zolin would not have kept them alive. They are either dead or within the catacombs.” He looks beyond her shoulder to where the light of the torch does not reach. The flames are spitting on the dirt below and so Zayir reaches out with his telepathy to brandish the torch again. He feels the chill of millennium pressing up his spine; the ghosts not only of their war but countless wars before. He thinks of the crystal sarcophagus he dreamt, the runic inscriptions, caskets and mummies and beasts immortalised in gold and crystal. Those were all things he dreamt within the catacombs, and a creeping and sick curiosity arises in him. Were they real?
Instead of asking, he looks to Cyrra. He has positioned himself very intentionally, blocking the body of Halim from view. His voice is soft when he says, “Would you like me to lead you out?” Only those who know him well will be able to discern the way his voice is thick with tears unshed.
"Speaks" || @
down into the folly, you took my hand
past the thistle and the red elm
