[TW] we do not choose our talents .

[El Rey]

TW: violence, blood, murder. brief and not particularly gory.

a king walks among us

He had not killed in months. He did not miss it. But no one told him “good job” anymore. But he was not supposed to kill. Soldiers protect. 

There was so much blood at his feet.

El Rey did not understand the nature of those who picked fights with the strong. So many, far smaller, less equipped, less practiced, had fallen before him. It was not as if he’d never fought off a group.

The alleyway was meant to be a refuge from the stimulus of the market, not a trap. 

It turned out to be a trap.

A wicked little colt at one end, dagger in his teeth, halted El Rey. A shadow of a young stallion closed the mouth of the corridor. 

”Give us your money.”

From what Rey had seen his father paid after fights, he did not make very much from being a soldier. He said, ”No.” He pressed his rump against the wall, thieves creeping closer. ”You are not very threatening."

”You’re not very smart,” the larger one sneered.

The black bull recalled every time his nursemaid and father had called him a clever boy. For fighting, for reading, for writing, for winning. ”You are wrong.”

The colt with the dagger lunged at El Rey. He did not have time to scream. Gold had pierced through the supple flesh of youth before any piece of iron could. The thief gurgled as El Rey lowered his head and let him slide off his horn, onto the ground. 

”What the fuck.” The stallion was backing away now. Rey would understand if he ran from death. 

But Rey was not supposed to kill anyone.

”You can’t tell.” Rey leapt at the stallion, a sharp twist of his head catching the thief as he tried to turn away. Their bodies collided with the floor as Rey drove his horns through the stallion’s throat and into the hard ground. 

Now he’d killed two people.

But now there was no one to tell. 

The black king slowly slid his horns from their perfect, gory slots. Thick, red blood dripped down his nose and onto the cobblestone. He said, ”You are not very smart.”

@Eshek

”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Eshek]

There is something cryptic unfolding in her as she walks. Each alleyway, and booth, and bonfire are more folds in that nameless, tangled thing unwrapping in her like a spool of wire. It branches out like a dead tree and tickles all the bones and pools of light churning like comets under her skin. The branches scrape, grow and the roots sink themselves into her legs. The sleepless and the desperate move around her like ants, small bundles of life that work, work and die. She is light between them and some look at her and whisper 'star'. And she smiles back and the light oozing like gore from her lips seems to say yes in a silent, throbbing chant. There are two moons in her eyes, moons that swallowed every sun and star in the sky until they were bright instead of stone. Necromancy lives in the sheen of her eyes, dead things made alive again by eating, and swallowing, and consuming. That cryptic unfolding thing in her bones quivers, and turns its holy gaze, when the edge of a blade flashes in the darkness like a bone in the starlight. She turns and the darkness dies in that space between her eyes where there has ever only been light. She closes her eyes, the darkness lives. The tap, tap, tap of hooves on stone lead her onward through the alleys. She can hear the words of the stallion, hear the sigh of the blade when it slips, hungry and wanting through the darkness. She can hear to the cry of bone and flesh slipping together like two worms in the dirt. The cryptic prophecy in her is unfolded now, and it's gaping and hollow. It swallows up the sound blood and flesh make and soon she's swallowing the blackness when she opens her eyes. Death unfolds before her like a prayer, an ritual offering to that hollow, gaping brightness inside of her. She smiles, more light pours out until the blood at her hooves is as bright as a ruby at high noon. The bodies look stark against the blackness and the brightness. They look like art above an altar. “Are you smart, then?” She says. But the way she says 'then', when it drips out in words made of light, makes the space in the silence sound like kneel. Each drop of blood from his nose slows when she blinks, blinks, blinks and casts the darkness into strobe-light instead of steady-light. She counts them each and tells that wanting thing inside that each drop is an offering. Eshek smiles and opens wide her eyes. The world returns to the speed of ants. eshek “a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

The clacking of hooves on the cobblestone is not lost to him; as flesh slides from his horns he begins to realize that he, still, is not alone. A light opens up the alley; nude and ashamed is the scene of gore and failed instruction. The blood turns bright as a coveted stone and El Rey thinks, for a moment, that it is pretty. 

But she has seen him.

”Are you smart, then?” She blinks and he squints against the flashing light, every muscle taut and ready to gore another civilian. He wonders if there is one more for each he kills. He does not want to be chased again.

”Yes.” He walks towards her, this bright and strange and foreign woman that will soon be split on his horns. But he is not weary, not yet. El Rey does not tire of such activity. It is like breathing. 

The black stallion halts with a few feet between them, eyes black and shining with Eshek’s own gaze and grin. He says, ”They attacked me,” hoping, briefly, that she did not see; but in the moment she belies further knowledge, he intends for her to find that a king’s crown is just as sharp as his sword.

@Eshek | Lacrimosa

”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Eshek]

Each of his steps opens up something inside her. The sound of his hooves of stone could be the cracking of her ribs folding back from her stomach. The whisper drip of blood from his horns could be the song her light-filled aorta sings inside her unfolding bones. And beneath it all, beneath the charred bone and light there is a hunger opening up its jaw wide-- wide inside her form. It watches him from behind the small sun and moons living in the holes of her face where eyes should be. She lifts her head like the apex of a cross when he stops before her. The light of her smile never fades, never flickers and it washes over them, the blood and the bodies like a tide washing over bones. Everything her eyes touches is dead, or will be dead. All the things beneath her light are made lovely, perfect and red and black and bright. Like bloody stars, she thinks, like bloody stars offered up to the universe of her. “I know.” The universe says between the world of bleeding, dying stars. Each words seems like a promise of indescribable of chaos. She steps closer and it's the start of a ceremony when the religion coiled inside her, above that great hunger, starts to unwind like a root in the deep of her. Flies gather around the bodies to become holy witnesses and the humming of their wings sounds like a organ pulsing n the night, weak but loud at the same time. “You were right to kill them.” It's praise writ in brightness from the altar of her teeth and the blades of his horn. Is the praise from a god every anything but bright? “Will you tell me who you are?” She rises the apex of her higher and higher. Soon it's the blood-red stretch of her throat that hangs in the space just before the sharp points of his horn. When she closes her eyes all the brightness of the alley dies and turns to a fathomless blackness. The blood doesn't seem like rubies at their hooves anymore, just death buried in the dirt and darkness. She waits, silently daring him to drink deep of the holy light. eshek “a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

He is not disturbed by the light of her, as he should be.

She is simply different, as all things above the ground  are. So many things above the ground are also beautiful. Her smile stays as he defends himself, but he would kill her just as quick, oh, he would. Expressions mean little to him. He can hardly read them. He mostly only knows the mean ones, anyway. 

”You were right to kill them.” 

It is the reassurance he needs, near-praise, in a way, but confirmation, for now, anyway, that he need not spill her light between the cobblestones (even if it already is). He lowers his head a moment, in a nod, almost, or something introspective, a pose for thinking in, maybe. But he looks up to her again as she speaks and offers her throat before him. El Rey would not have needed it to end her. He does not want to, now. (Even as the world goes black again, he does not yearn for light; it burns against his sight.)

”I am El Rey, of the Sevetta and the House of Bulls.” His ears twist to catch the sound of the flies rising, buzzing, singing to the corpses on which they feast. He wonders where they came from, briefly, but he is more concerned with his own survival and the being before him (two things which, he is certain, are directly related). ”Who are you?”


@Eshek | Puppet On a String

”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Eshek]

In that stinging blackness in her eyes, where skin is burning to hold back all the light, Eshek is falling. Down, down, down. She's traveling down between all the ash and soot in her blood, all the worlds orbiting the tunnel of her larynx. It is a sensation of which she is familiar with, that feeling of spiraling down in the blackness that is a suggestion of a thousands shapes but of also nothing at all. Oh it's been so long since she's felt it, this promise of violence that hasn't learn what form to evolve into. For that she will always be grateful to this massive altar of a boy with blood dripping from his horns as if they dream of being guillotines. “I am Eshek.” She says into the black death of the alley in which her throat is still trembling with the urge to flow like a river. Her blood flows like mad water through her and it wants out. It wants to eat and eat until there is nothing left but the bottom of a bright sea. Eshek opens her eyes and she cannot help but miss the darkness just a little. There are wonderful things to be discovered in the blackness. Her muzzle waits between them like an offering, a ghoulish precipice in which she's not sure he would ever be able to understand. Stallions with horns are made for different things than that which dead things and Gods are made for. “El Rey,” She starts and her eyes throb like a heartbeat in the holes of her head. “You could be of more than Sevetta and the House of Bulls. You could be of everything.” Each of her teeth shine with spit and water when she smiles at him like a mother might or like a prayer might smile at bent heads and bloody knees. “Would you like to learn?” eshek “a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

The flies are buzzing, buzzing, buzzing and tension hangs on the air like teeth clinging to a precipice before an endless drop. 

”I am Eshek.” 

The words would feel like scripture to anyone who knew how to listen. El Rey only knows how to listen for the creaking of poising muscles, clenching jaws, unsheathing claws. He hears only a name. 

The light returns. 

Light, dark, light, dark. It is as if Eshek controls the rising of the sun and the falling of it. The moon hangs idly by as she turns the daylight of the alley on and off. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick
tock.

His horns hold their slickness as the conversation slithers along; there is too much blood on those bones to dry. 

Eshek makes him an offer he cannot understand. 

Eshek proposes to teach him. 

He says, ”What would you have me do?”

There is no shame in trading one master for another. He has never tried to please two. There has never been a need for it.


@Eshek
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,

[Eshek]

There is blood between them, blood and light. Everything she has ever needed is here in this alley with her, death and life on which hangs the promise of a hundred more ends. Eshek does not blink again. It looks like a star has gorged itself upon the sharp tines of Denocte until all the edges of it were too weak to hold in all that fat brightness. In history it has always been bright things that brought revelation. There is history in every inch of her. Her bones could be made of scrolls in which secrets never die. She is writ and revelation. Eshek is that star dashed across the stone tines of every court. She is. She is. She is. She will always be. The ghoulish precipice of her muzzle lays itself across the blood too thick to dry pooling in the crescent moon curve of his horns. The blood tastes like nothing on her tongue, only light has any taste at all to her-- only light. She smiles and her teeth become empty altar cups for the offerings dripping like grotesque tears from him. “I would only ask one thing of you.” Blood makes her voice a whisper of space, black and devouring of almost every other sound in the world. But she knows he can hear her. She knows. She knows. She always knows. “Come home.” Those altar cups in her mouth are empty. She could fit all of him in that emptiness. There is a home in all the hollow brightness of her for every boy with blood on horns shaped like dying moons. Home is in her. Eshek pulls away and home moves with her. Blood shines of on her nose like an eclipse of light, like a prophecy. She turns back to the filthy sand that looks like gold and tastes like nothing. It is not home to which she goes. But she is god, and gods are home for mortal boys. eshek “a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”

@El Rey

[El Rey]

a king walks among us

He watches watches watches as she dips her maw into the wine dripping slowly from his horns, slick and sweet as honey.
(The drip drip drip pauses for Eshek - she is softer than a dead thing ought to be, against an onyx blade).

There is light in even the darkest crevices as Eshek looks upon him, speaks to him, so quietly, yes, so softly, and El Rey loves the way she does not grate on his ears like a pit fighter or a thief in an alleyway.

”Come home.”

Home is good and dark and soft and full of words and full of quiet. 

Home was.

Home is ruined now with the body of nursemaid and it cannot be taken back.

Home could be the sand he was born on, if only he knew.

But Eshek has offered him a new set of laws to live by, and El Rey thinks he might like them better.

Come home.

She turns light on the chasm behind-now-before her and walks into its nothingness.

El Rey follows his new law.


@Eshek
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,