a king walks among us
Her silk becomes dead things crumbling to dust.
Of course you can’t go home.
Look how the city trembles around you. Look how they all fear you as much as they hate you.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Of course it was your fault.
He sees the weapons he loves turn to weapons he can understand. She backs away. Farther farther and aiming aiming.
But -
I do not fear you.
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
What to do what to do what to do without your praise?
What to do without your fear?
But the trembling and the hate is what this is all for, is it not? This is what he was made for, this is what he was raised for, trained, appointed for…
He steps forward. He does not look the arrow in the eye apple. He will not. He looks at her, two empty galaxies for seeing with. It hurts to be played for a fool - but what could he expect, now, having become someone? Truly, what else was there to do when power began to seep from your pores as sweat, as Eshek promised, his father promised, Raum promised…
He had no magic to contend with hers. He could not see a way with his beetle eyes that would allow him past the garden of arrows. He wanted to call her a coward. Stand and fight, then. Remove the barrier between us. Show me the end of your blade, I will show you mine in unison. The scraping of bone on bone could make his skin shiver.
He remembers then what else Eshek promised.
The sands had become his home. Not the cellar. Not the nursemaid. Not his father. ”I already am home,” he began, low and fathomless in depth. ”And I do not fear you.” He should’ve, oh, he should have. He knew those roses for what they were, now, but oh, o, he would stamp them flat as foil beneath his hooves to gut her in her own false garden.
@Isra | Ozymandias
”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“
I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,
