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SUFFERING FEELS RELIGIOUS IF YOU DO IT RIGHT
Raziel cannot remember what it felt like to be free. Only the deafening absence of lucidity among years of transition; an alignment of past and present whereby the native blackness of his hallowed heart merged with an ever-so explosive chaos of grief. It was slow, insidious, Machiavellian.
Sometimes, upon catching the bleached throb of a sunset he should never have seen he wonders if his ichor-thick blood would drown out the horizon. He isn't afraid of to die; to hear his body sing in pain.
It is the fear of what might be waiting on the other side that keeps him so doggedly tied to this mortal plane. That Hell eternal might harbour a fate worse than the transient precursor he was passing through now.
So it is with an amalgamation of resignation and foreboding that he allows his jugular to tilt but fractionally upward in the face of this ancient sea-beast: just enough so that when she steps into him, with vengeance and hunger roaring like banshees in her hair, there will be an answer to her question that had hung in the air since its exodus from her lips. "What killed you... What killed you... What killed you..."
He will say, "you" and it will be a release. An end to this purgatory he has negotiated on the breast of his brother's corpse. He does not think of Gahenna. What is he but a creature selfish unto his dying breath?
He waits, violet eyes heavy with the desert, fixed behind a threshold that will not come. Greedy, wanton. But there is only the sound of her voice in the big black night, growing dim and gauzy until it pales into oblivion and he is left all at once alone. He stumbles on his disappointment, staring into the space she had left behind with nothing but the knowledge that the night will end and it will be morning again and he will still be here.
Raziel cannot remember what it felt like to be free. Only the deafening absence of lucidity among years of transition; an alignment of past and present whereby the native blackness of his hallowed heart merged with an ever-so explosive chaos of grief. It was slow, insidious, Machiavellian.
Sometimes, upon catching the bleached throb of a sunset he should never have seen he wonders if his ichor-thick blood would drown out the horizon. He isn't afraid of to die; to hear his body sing in pain.
It is the fear of what might be waiting on the other side that keeps him so doggedly tied to this mortal plane. That Hell eternal might harbour a fate worse than the transient precursor he was passing through now.
So it is with an amalgamation of resignation and foreboding that he allows his jugular to tilt but fractionally upward in the face of this ancient sea-beast: just enough so that when she steps into him, with vengeance and hunger roaring like banshees in her hair, there will be an answer to her question that had hung in the air since its exodus from her lips. "What killed you... What killed you... What killed you..."
He will say, "you" and it will be a release. An end to this purgatory he has negotiated on the breast of his brother's corpse. He does not think of Gahenna. What is he but a creature selfish unto his dying breath?
He waits, violet eyes heavy with the desert, fixed behind a threshold that will not come. Greedy, wanton. But there is only the sound of her voice in the big black night, growing dim and gauzy until it pales into oblivion and he is left all at once alone. He stumbles on his disappointment, staring into the space she had left behind with nothing but the knowledge that the night will end and it will be morning again and he will still be here.
![[Image: deadj5s-7ea0ce6c-63ed-494d-a2b1-1ea29d98..._KYezSKapw]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/62895f4e-8c60-4924-a6f1-54bf30743d42/deadj5s-7ea0ce6c-63ed-494d-a2b1-1ea29d98adc1.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3sicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNjI4OTVmNGUtOGM2MC00OTI0LWE2ZjEtNTRiZjMwNzQzZDQyXC9kZWFkajVzLTdlYTBjZTZjLTYzZWQtNDk0ZC1hMmIxLTFlYTI5ZDk4YWRjMS5wbmcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.No4YMruHY_LHkiZwS9oVnGKGelURHdwU3_KYezSKapw)
