tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
He comes upon that first night of the festival, as the pregnant moon hangs low within the sky. She whispers to the half-moon sigils upon his brow, his shoulders. They twinge and glow in answer and that is how the blind man knows there is a full moon within the sky that night.
Tenebrae's blinded eyes are silver as the moonlight that soaks his skin. They swirl with feverish light, unabashed sunlight that still burns the magic out of his eyes. Once he had been great among his brothers, a true Disciple of Caligo, but now the once-monk wanders quietly, no longer Denocte's Regent, merely a blinded boy.
Thia prowls ahead of him. She is black as pitch, her body formed from his shadow magic. In his ears her voice directs him, her black eyes his eyes. In the distance a song strikes up, instruments fill the air with a melody and the air is filled with laughter and want.
He should not be here. It was a festival where he danced with Elena for the first time. It was a festival where he danced with Boudika then told her he had slept with Elena. Then he was blinded and cursed, cast out as a monk. Oh, Tenebrae, such a fool. For all his body has not aged, for all that he walks as a young man, a warrior honed for battle, his soul is weathered, it is old and wise. Regret has bent him. Tenebrae has become crooked.
Beside the bonfire light, that seeks to bathe him in red, to warn any who look at him - Sinner! Sinner! - the Denoctian's shadows swell. Black creeps and smothers the bonfire light. Darkness consumes him and Thia slinks back to him, shifting from panther into smoke. What do you want, Tenebrae? She breathes to him.
And he laughs, low, rough, ragged.
For what does he not want?
So the blind man waits, in darkness, beyond where the dancers swirl and perilously close to where the holy offer their spring prayers up to their gods.
Oh blasphemer.
[Open to any!]
