TW for limbs being severed.
a king walks among us
It is God that has guided my hand, darkness that has borne me, light that has shunned me. For in this world I am an outcast, I am a soldier, I am a king, I am a bull. I have shed blood for glory and blood for pride. Blood for blood and blood for life and blood for death. I have ended lives simply because I could. I have ended lives because it was commanded of me; I have sown discord and agony into the remaining weeks or days or hours of those that dare rebel against my God, my king, my darkness.
I am crowned in golden gore.
It is today that I will do a great thing, a public thing, to show them what they wish to see, what my king wishes to show them. It is today that I will sever bone from flesh from feather from muscle from vein - it is today that fear will bleed down the white marble into the masses, so that they may lap up this lifeblood as water in the desert, as order in chaos, order which He has brought us. Suffer, rebel, suffer. There is no redemption for you here.
The man before me is familiar. Caine, he is called, a cursed name, I have learned. I am told he deserves this punishment and this I shall believe. Already he lays in a crumpled mass of blood and bone and feather and waste; some of this is of my own doing. What has been inflicted upon him is a result of his actions.
He shouts.
”Long live Seraphina!”
In a swift motion my hooves have come down upon his wings like - like - like what they are. There is the breaking of bones and the clatter of hoof on marble. Blood squirts from open wounds. I see art, I see God. ”Blasphemer, you will suffer on this day,” are the words, the flat, cold words. They never sound like violence as I wish they would; they never sound like me. A feather escapes him and flutters against me, briefly, as Juniper’s, and for a moment I am with her, and then it is gone and so is she.
I have been given an axe. It is lovely, really, curved as my own crown of horns and it shines almost as they do.
”The sky will escape you. Never again shall its wind dance against your feathers. Never again will the sun welcome you, here or there. May its rays always bring the memory of what you once had. You have blasphemed, you have sinned, and for every wrongdoing, there is a price.”
I swing the axe.
The axe cuts the air. In this great swooping motion, I see it is not a part of me, magic tethers it to my mind but in this slow-moment I feel that some other force controls it, some other force has told me to do what I have always done and while I feel it is right it is a path from which I have never strayed a path to which I cling like the feathers of Her and the commands of Him and the blood of Them and I do not know if this is the path of my heart, knowing that She is with my heart and This, This is not-
Thunk.
Crimson splatters against my face, against the marble, against him but the two of us we are black and so it is the white white stone that shows us the true violence of this act. The wing is severed, bone stark white and something catches in my lungs.
I smile. I raise the axe again. This is my mind, my doing.
The axe falls, harder this time - perhaps it is more merciful, perhaps I should have offered less force, to only separate the tissues in part, to swing three, four, five times, but a thrill shivers through my being and I look at this which I have done. There are two more wings. I look to the crowd; there are cheers, there are screams, there is silence. I step back. Maybe it is enough. Maybe this - the having of a part, but not the whole, would be the true punishment. ”Never again,” I breathe, and it may be that only he can hear me, ”Never again.”
Who is your king now?
@Caine @Raum
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,
