You’re dying, he wants to tell her. But Asterion isn’t sure that Thana would believe him. What unicorn has ever listened, or believed they were a mortal thing at all?
Instead he only watches her (her and her beast) drip with blood that is only partially their own. He pays no more attention to the sinking god, not even to wonder whether it will only rise again (something always does). He doesn’t consider that he has never killed anything before.
Maybe this is only a dream, too. Maybe that’s all the island is, a palace woven of nightmares.
Asterion almost wants to test it by pressing forward against her blade, scattering the salt of his blood to the sea he’s made. His bones are hollow without all his power; his soul is still black and bottomless. If it were not for the thing inside him, cozied up against his consciousness, he might have given himself to that death, if only to prove her words wrong.
Instead they both (he and the sickness within him) only watch as she turns back toward the flooded hallways of the castle and the waking streets of the city. And there is no one left to watch when Asterion steps up onto the water that swirls beneath his belly like it is no less solid than glass, and walks from the dead monster-king and the drowning city.
the way upward and the way downward
is one and the same.
is one and the same.
