[AW] Serpents in the Sand

[Judal]

The ruin of a presisting haunting, those memories in which the thoughtless horrors of the past lingered, digging as barbs into the flesh, the mind. When last had the hateful let go to wild abandon, forging new paths, creating victory in the rise of a new day? Few could even remember when a time before the cruelty began, so absolute was their addiction, their obsession. Judal loathed the indulgent gluttony of fine, fair magisters, those polished, perfumed portraits blazed into his skull as an avid worshipper would, set upon the alter to whisper unfaltering prayer. And yet, no solemn oath of protection or love would be offered, only the hailmarry of desolation, of unwellness.  Perhaps it was childish, refusing to relinquish his forged ties, the brand of fire still as hot as the day it had first glided upon his skin as a sinful lover. No open wounds laid sore upon his flesh, delicate threadings of silver clothe, faultless and whole. No agonizing fear tormented him in the night, darkness, and relief, an unfamiliar companion. Time had healed all things, as was the prophet's command, a winding back of the clock to the beginning, where all things meant little in the naivety of the unknowing. He was child in what it meant to hold true freedom, a will all his own. An aggressor in the norms of society, in what it meant to be a slave, all that was his actions were long decided for him, forced into place by the sole fact that there was no other option. Rebel, or lose the power to choose, to want for something better. Feel hate, so that the daunting prospect of unrelenting fear did not consume the possibility of forgiveness.  Those great temples, a dominating shadowscape beneath which his life had played, no longer seemed so close, so suffocating. A distant monster, a titan locked beneath the lock of Zeus' reign, Judal had crossed the vast deserts, fleeing where once the red-winged birds had flown, a fond, wanting dream from eons past. Now, it seemed that there was no end to the conflict, no end to the melancholy mother, offering only her barren bones to his seeking eyes. Breathing, scorched by the sun, ashen where his thirst had remained unquenched for so long, silver mercury took into the winding dunes, the plethora of bone white grit beneath which his hooves ground to dust. How many hopefuls laid perished beneath his feet, taken to the drift when fooly had led them astray. He would survive, as was the way of his kin, the sun blood hot, smoldering within his chest, casting the flame of the forge from within, and yet, even he, the hot-blooded fool, found no love for this purgatory he walked. Some had whispered of another land, a world brought anew beneath the guidance of civilized world, a promise that while tempting, had little weight in his steps. Whether they existed or not, he would see the other side of the wastes, wound find a place free from both chains and empty kinship, and build his life anew. Speak