andras
i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
I
t's a strange feeling, being called by name, staring into the face of your god and feeling a rotten mix of fear and anger and joy that churns the stomach. Andras wonders what Somnus feels when he looks at Oriens. It cannot be the same thing. There is no way it's the same thing.Stranger too, when he is called by name, on the tongues of the gathered crowd, as they practically scream it into the fog and the mid-morning, yellowed light. Sovereign Andras. King of Delumine. His mouth has gone suddenly dry. Telling, too, I suppose, is the silence that falls when every other voice has died down: no crackle of electricity, no sparking blue light-- Andras cannot find it in him to be angry. He is not so sure he can feel anything at all.
He tells them--all of them, men and women and children gathered in the glow of the rising sun, the castle thrust up in the background like an omen--that he will do his best. Andras does not say much else. He bows, and ducks out of the center, and leaves the crowd to their roaring. Every step he takes someone claps him on the back and whoops. It is a sea of necks stretching to touch him and invisible hands reaching out for relief.
From their grief, and their tiredness, and the fear and the need that go with them.
Andras sets his face in a grim, stern line. They do not know their grief and fear is his own. He still feels like skin wrapped around a hole. The disappearance of Delumine's previous regime, while he stood, alone, to watch over their kingdom-- it is like a knife.
He is glad for it, then, when the crowd parts and a dark shape swims through it, all but crackling herself with the same feral, wild anger that sits in his chest. Listen, buddy, she begins, and does not physically touch him, but the words do the jabbing, each one prodding at his chest or his ribs until he aches with it. It's... freeing, almost. Almost.
"I don't know what you're talking about, but sure." Andras says. His smile is not forced but it is toothy and white, more of a snarl than anything else. "Island's yours. Wouldn't dream of interrupting whatever you're doing."
There is a thing in him asking to snap, tapping against the back of his tongue. It tastes like lightning. "So, who are you?" He likes her.
She reminds him of himself.
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
