kalopsia ;; [stella vs aeson day eight]

You do not scream when you fall with a legacy.

Taken by momentum yet gripped by fatigue, you slip in ichor and fall onto an iron bed. You curse through grinding teeth and bleeding palms -- you do not name this red flood 'holy'. You look to Violet's fallen form, beauty eclipsed by gore and a crimson pool. You stare at the back of her head, your eyes do not wander from the rise and fall of her torso and you listen for something.

This is the sound of a bleeding dynasty; the song of disintegrating kingdom, dissolving monarchy and dying divinity. This is music to your ears, every chorus punctured by the agony-laced labored breaths. You form red riptides into the ground, add to your scarlet blood trail and wait for her to stand, for her to fight. You dare her to.

Rhythm of red riptides, the chorus ends with cannon fire.

You pick yourself up, pressing your finger against your racing heart, and you laugh. "Good fight, Salazar" She doesn't hear you but you hope they see you, see past the gashes and broken bones and into your mangled conscience. Something twisted, something beautifully broken. Aeson Kight; killer of dynasties. You like it. "But don't fuck with me."

You've torn one son and two daughters from trembling fingers, you say you like it.

You click your bones and roll your shoulders as you drag yourself towards her corpse. You set yourself down, pull her over on her back and you're met with closed eyes -- defiance in death. It's a beautiful sight, the sight of a mangled corpse. The two gorges you've left torn into her stomach, the gashes on her forearm and smile across her thigh; exceptionally beautiful things look better dead.

Case in point.

You take scoop up her bag of supplies, moving to the clicking of your bones, and set yourself down. Leaning against the wall and taking out your medical supplies -- you don't care to move so they can collect the body. This is a sight you want to cherish, just a little longer. So you set your leg in bandages, wincing at every movement. You move onto the gash on your bicep, the bandages and stitches Euley set the day prior torn and in tatters. It's quickly closed and also bandaged. You wrap bandages across your torso, just so the bleeding on your back stops.

How Violet did this to you, you do not know. The opportunity to add a murdered Salazar to your kill list proved too tempting, and you've sacrificed your mobility, bone and body for it upon this red temple of yours. Her death wasn't yours, it never was, but you took it anyway. For this banner you carry is not held by the desire for victory, it embodies chaos.

You push yourself up, using your ski pole as a walking stick, and don Violetta Salazar's armour. You enjoy the embrace of steel once more. You turn to her downed form once more, a canvas of crimson and beauty you've made; you enjoy the sight of red riptides. You think to say something, words of parting, but the dead don't hear you.

So you smile through your grit teeth and bite the cold. You leave her broken body behind on the alter of this crimson temple of yours.

You embrace the kiss of winter against your wounds and give a sigh of relief at the sight of white flood. You stumble and drag yourself through the snow. The sky weeps snow, as if mourning the sound of cannon fire. This is ruination, the blood trail you leave in the snow, the red riptides staining your skin and the blood on your teeth. The agony dulls and your shattered pride repairs; you can bring yourself to smile through this white expanse.

Let them see the blood on your teeth.

You lose the sight of sunlight, a blaze is replaced by twin moons and you set yourself down to rest. Give yourself to slothfulness; you hope your father rolls in his grave. How many sons can you take away? How many daughters can you crush? How many people can you make scream?

You wonder if you've made anyone cry.

The thought is interrupted at a buzzing by your ear and the flash of yellow in the corner of your eye. You recognize a bee when you see one, what the fuck is a bee doing in a frozen tundra?

Until you remember, the wolf's companion.

It buzzes angrily by your face before setting itself gently upon your chest, right over where the heart is said to be. E+A, a fucking stupid design. Your musings are taken by sadistic hypothetical moments; you think about finding whoever designed the sweater, whoever this EA person is and driving a blade into their gut. Twisting the knife and pulling their insides from the wound. It's more of a fleeting thought, you probably won't live to see anything past this frozen wasteland. Your lack of mobility speaks volumes; sacrificed at the alter just so you could the name Salazar to your blood trail.

You decide a broken leg is worth a shattered legacy.

So you move forwards, the sky is lit up by more than just stars. You look to the sky, attention taken by the harmonic of the patriotic and focused on the eyes of Bella Rose. You smile because you're moving forwards, she took your warning. The next time you saw her was in the sky. Good for her, because whatever end she was gifted is merciful compared to what you had in store for her.

You're moving forwards, and this fact is illustrated by the blonde curls and blue eyes staring at you from the sky. Shitstain, the so called 'career' who fought with his heart and not his body. Failed to see the beauty behind a pierced organ and spoke with such a self-righteousness you could've gagged. Pathetic.

You've moving through the remnants of a shattered kingdom, you stare into the eyes of an exceptionally beautiful thing. She looked better before, the real her. With gashes riddling her body and the mark of your sadism engraved in her stomach. You can't help but wonder who's daughter you've taken away, how many other's sister you've crushed. You can't help but wonder if you've made Jacinta Salazar cry.

(”There’s so much to live for, and you picked all of this. Does it really make you happy?”)

You blink and open your eyes to the sight of silver hair.

"Euley Sarasin."

You're moving backwards, and rather than the sound of sobs and musings of suffering, you're taken by echoes. The afterimage of her arms around your torso, her head in your shoulder and hair in your face. Withdrawal shakes your skin, tears through your flesh and leaves your eyes wide open. You go to sit up, but steel twists in your chest.

You slam your right fist into the snow.

You let out an involuntary groan, broken wrist. You focus on the pain blooming from your broken wrist to distract yourself from the agony. You understand this better, the throb of a broken bone and the cry of a swollen limbs. You miss the splitting of skin and the legacy of lacerations --

(her lips against yours)

-- you focus on the pain tearing through your bicep. Because it's easier to understand, because you forget the taste of Euley's steel in your chest.

You don't forget, for some reason.

You stare at your hand, illuminated by the light from Euley's face and realize that you're moving backwards. Your mind reverses, back to the training center where you looked into the eyes of something unbreakable and swore to yourself that you'd watch it crumble -- ("Will you follow, Aeson? Will you kill me?") Moonlit curves, nails against your skin and lips against yours; nothing could kill it, nothing but you.

Until you didn't.

("My death is mine now.")

You fucking should've. Because she shouldn't have been ended by Loverboy Raven Sayer. Just another page to his vengeance taken through tears shed for a lost lover. Better you than to be another bruise notched upon that coward from Nine's skin. Better you than to be another faded footnote in Stella's story, a wolf skinned by the girl with 10 marked on her skin.

You stare at your red knuckle and swollen wrist, illuminated by her face and drowned by the anthem; you steel feel the twist of red steel.

You feel it, her lips against yours and ice smoke in your lungs. Her nails against your flesh and needles in your skin -- the world melting beneath your fingertips. Withdrawal; beneath her white veil when you left her with a script for lust and betrayal on her lips. Long after you found out she wasn't unbreakable, long before you felt her hands in your hair to chase the hellfire from your dreams -- ("I'm not afraid, though. It can eat me raw. As long as you're there with me. Only if you're there with me.")

After she said she cared and you never reciprocated.

Perhaps, if you loved Euley Sarasin, you would show something. Something beyond a broken hand against snow, your skin would shake at the withdrawal of whatever this was. Whatever it meant to care.

You look up.

"Euley--"

The words die on the tip of your tongue, for the space in the sky her face occupied is only filled by the stars.

---

You're not six years old when you wake up, a thirst for vengeance sticks to your tongue.

You tug your ski pole up from the ground and pull yourself up with ease, you're moving forwards. It's not something you understand, for whenever you'd witnessed 'loss' it had always been when something perceived to be yours was taken. But Euley was never yours.

So why do you care?

You find summer's ashes in this infinite expanse of white. Crimson flowers are crushed beneath your boot, you recognize Vesper Daisy's bloodied outline and grin. You do not carry the banner of Six here because this is not a battle for glory. This is a crusade against humanity.

You shed yours a long time ago, it's seen in the bloodied footprints you leave behind, the way you drag your broken leg forwards with your ski pole. The seeds of insanity bloom and you allow your hatred to fester -- ("take me to it.") Your movement becomes mechanical, you drive yourself forwards on gears, cogs and the promise of brimstone. Your glory days are wearing out but that doesn't stop you trudging through the snow.

You spot bloodied footprints that aren't yours and pause.

And you continue, your body moving forwards as your mind reverses, you're kissed by an echo -- ("I do care, whether or not you want to believe it.")

You find footprints once again, not human, they belong to tredgehogs. The ones that pulled you across the arena for six days. They cross and twist with the crimson footprints, blending into the crimson flowers and your eyes narrow, you follow the promise of brimstone. Trudging through the snow and slush, dragging yourself with your ski pole.

You find the sled, you find the tent and you ghosts scratch at your skin with the breeze.

Apathy becomes your compass, your expression vacant but movement spelling something else. You smell blood, someone wear's the wolf's pelt here. You let your bag slip from your back and tag your tag, lathering four ski poles with tar and readying a match to strike against your skin.

A homicide pact drenched in hellfire.

You wait for Loverboy's vengeance, but it is Stella who wears the wolf's pelt. She carries the banner of District Twelve and swears to fight for survival -- Euley a footnote to her story. She calls out to you before you even see her. “She’s not here, Aeson. But I’m sure you knew that,” you strike a match and set your ski poles alight. “You saw her last night in the sky, didn’t you?”

Your forearm weeps scarlet, you do not move nor flinch at the sight of her ski pole burying itself in the ground next to you. You speak, voice flat but carried by a promise of blood.

"Did you enjoy it?"

Perhaps, if you could bring yourself to love Euley Sarasin, your hands would shake when you bring hell down upon Stella Blakesley.

[dars]

I think I lost my mind a while ago
'Cause I've been seeing some ghosts
And I'd be lying if I told you I'm fine
But I lie

Your spear strikes true, but you're met with a steel song.

The world keeps turning, the stars do not weep and the sun doesn't howl.

(as if she was never here)

The steel song that follows her truth does nothing to chase the ghosts clawing at your skin, the tent that stands proudly behind her; the tent you shared. She wears the fur of a skinned wolf, dons her possessions and carries her head as a trophy; but there is no pleasure. No pride for her to hold, no enjoyment derived from the collapse of a mountain, the shattering of winter. "I think the only person enjoying anything about being here is you, Aeson."

Just truth.

She hobbles but carries an iron will, clads herself in steel skin and shrouds herself in your wolf's regal pelt. But she isn't royalty, she doesn't give off the impression that the sky would weep at the sound of her cannon, she isn't unbreakable. You can't help but laugh, a bitter yet chocked sound. You sound dead -- as if you haven't decayed for twelve years. She's your contradiction, she claims she doesn't coat herself in Euley's blood, that she isn't like you because you feel no shame in the murders you commit. That you're proud your aim has always struck true.

Oh, how you love the sound of rotten judgement.

You tilt your head to the side and just the sight of Euley's fur coat around her body is enough to make your right eye twitch. There's an ignition in the back of your mind and the bee buzzes angrily at your chest in agreement. "Oh spare me that."

The thought is cut short by her flaming rod soaring through the air towards you, flames red and hungry for the kill. You remind yourself, this is not hellfire, and this fact is shown when by your sluggish sidestep sparing you the full brunt of her attack. The ski pole itself skimming shallow but the flames tearing away at your shin guards, you bite your tongue at the sun's kiss. It melts the snow beside you.

"You're not cruel, but that didn't stop you from killing her," you pull yourself to the side, eyes hungrily searching for an opening along her wound-riddled skin. "Dead is dead, it doesn't matter what colour the killer's heart is. Fact of the matter is, you're no better than us now." Vesper Daisy said it herself, your heart is in murder. And the same sentiment is true for the girl from Twelve, her heart relies on murder. You're all entangled by the same thread, all bound to the ground by the same chain. You're all a shade of darkness here, it doesn't matter who tends closer towards grey.

You all bleed and you all die; when it comes it comes.

Fact of the matter is, Euley is dead. You don't feel her scarlet pulse against your skin anymore and the only time her lips touch yours is a false perception. She died and took your secrets with her, the nightmares buried beneath your skin, the sight of your eyes when you weren't shrouded by apathy or tending towards bloodlust. Her heart doesn't beat anymore, and her death didn't belong to you in the end; you're left with a memory. The sight of her silver hair shrouding her face when you shoved her into the snow and allowed darkness to swallow you.

"We'll exist on, as murderers. You'll always be known as the one who murdered Euley Sarasin."

It doesn't make sense to you, the world still rotates and the sky never fell. It was the first thought to cross your mind in the training centre, when you decided you wanted to wrap your hands around Euley Sarasin's throat and squeeze the life out of her. That you wanted to hold her closer and closer until you felt her ribs snap. When you saw her moonlit curves, you could only think that cannon fire wasn't good enough to signal her end. The sky had to weep, the world had to pause its motion; there had to be an eternity of mourning, or something to that magnitude.

Except there isn't, the sound of her cannon was no louder than the ones that sounded before it and her face faded from the sky just as her name left your lips. Stella Blakesley stands here, clad in your wolf's pelt and carrying her trophies. The world keeps turning, she's still breathing and you move as if nothing happened. Your hands coil around your ski pole and you throw an extension of hell towards Stella as hard as you can. Fighting as if Euley Sarasin is nothing more than an afterthought. A beautiful yet bitter afterthought.

"And trust me, I won't lose a minute of sleep after I've murdered you."

Perhaps, if you could've brought yourself to love Euley Sarasin, this idea would drive you to insanity.

[dars]

I think I lost my mind a while ago
'Cause I've been seeing some ghosts
And I'd be lying if I told you I'm fine
But I lie

"If you think I'm afraid of your darkness, you haven't seen mine yet."


You take two steps back and flames hungrily devour at her flesh, bite at her skin and leave her red raw. There's a sizzle of approval, a kiss against your skin; this is good.

"Good," you spit into the snow, no blood. "Because fuck fear."

(Because she shouldn't have died to a coward)

Your moving forwards, two steps into the snow and your mind orbits the sight of blood in the snow. "I don't want to gut a coward quivering in their boots," you're tired of it. Tired of the ones who cry when you drive a blade into their gut, tired of the ones who scream about some hell waiting for you and sob about fairness. "Or be killed by one." You add, glaring at your wounds and resting your eyes on your swollen femur.

They never called you brave, you were just too insane to ever know fear.

You smile at the realization; Aeson Kight knows no fear. Even as you stare death in the eyes, as you're gripped by the sun and your throat is held by the reaper's claws. You live to break bodies, live to watch yourself decay, you tear down Stella's banner of morality and set it alight -- you watch it burn. The burning of self-righteousness, the ashes of innocence.

It smells like burning flesh.

The sun spear she hurls in your direction does nothing to slow your advance. You don't fling yourself to the side, you don't care, you simply swipe and catch the shaft against your own burning ski pole and scream.

There's blood on your teeth, ash on your tongue.

(let them see something beautifully twisted)

Red raw skin, across your forearms and burned pieces of your sweater hitting the ground. The bee buzzes by your ear, agitated by the flames, but you ignore it.

You ignore the ghosts that whisper in your ear.

You traverse across this frozen graveyard and watch time rewind. Isaac stands by that tent behind Stella, Violet peers from the inside, Euley stands unbreakable. You camped here, in summer's ashes, and drove your spear through Vesper Daisy's core. You camped here, and plotted the death of your allies as you slept in that tent before scripture took you back to when you were six years old.

But fuck sentiment, fuck fear. Your body screams and your flesh sings. Begs for reprive, begs for mercy. You bite your tongue and tell it to be quiet.

The ashes of morality smell like burning flesh. Your mind retergrades back to Distrixt Six. The time one of your targets was smoking when you found him, sitting homeless in a backalley and blissfully unaware of the reaper's scythe at his neck. You drove that cigarette into his fucking eye, he cried and he begged you to stop. You drive it into his skin and listened to him sob -- you tasted ecstacy in that moment.

His screams mirrored yours, for a split second, but you don't beg. You take the smell of searing flesh in stride and hold your final two extensions of hell in two hands. One broken and swollen, one red and one torn. You step over the ashes of her morality, and grin through gritted teeth and torn sanity.

"I'm tired of people who beg for mercy," this is not a song of redemption. "I don't want your fear."

This is a chorus of vengeance.

"I want you to take that darkness and look into my eyes."

It's sung by the cackling of your flames, the clicking of your bones. The blood trail you leave in the snow as you pull yourself towards Stella Blakesey's battered form.

(I want your life)

A special place in hell's waiting for you, but it seems to good to be true. It's unknown, something dark beyond the realms of your comprehension. Illuminated by dead scripture and starved eyes. But this. This rhythm, this dance of hellfire and sun spears. This is real, tangible; you can reach out with one hand and grip Stella and touch the pelt of your skinned wolf. This is vengeance. This is tangible.

The burning of morality smells like human flesh, the call for vengeance mirrors the cackling of red flame.

An incarnation of vengeance, an extension of hell -- your ski pole becomes a solar flare.

[dars]

I think I lost my mind a while ago
'Cause I've been seeing some ghosts
And I'd be lying if I told you I'm fine
But I lie

"You want more of a challenge don't you?"

The vengeful wolf dies with your flame, it whimpers beneath her bitter laugh as you draw a scarlet line with her blood. The ski pole slips from your grip and hits the snow between you, melting a patch of snow and soaking the scarlet nebula from your skin. You shove the unflammable edge of your final ski pole into the snow to catch yourself from falling and grit your teeth as the pulsating pain through your bandage bound femur.

Scarlet iron splashed across an ivory white background, you look up and see distance.

You need to close it, she's outmanuevering you, and the handicap is obvious but worth it. The opportunity to slay a salazar, you sacrificed your mobility to a red alter just so you could hold Violet's life in your hands and crush it between your fingers. A death that wasn't yours, a life with stars and promise -- oh how you love the sight of broken opportunity.

You pull yourself up to the sound of her voice and ignore the flames that lick as your skin.

You ignore the ghosts that poke at your lacerations. You ignore Euley's nails digging into the back of your shoulders, you ignore Isaac's hand on your skin, you ignore Violet's torture device against your skin. You forget. You listen her words drone to background noise -- it's been eighteen years, oh just take me to it already.


One step forwards, your bones click and your muscles pop.

"What did you think would become of me?"

Two steps forwards, scarlet steel soaks into a cold canvas.

"I've always wondered why not?"

Three steps forwards, your flames hunger.

"Did you want to see the inevitable transformation of something pure into something drenched in blood?"

Half a step and a stop; she's asking you so many questions and you don't know the answer to all of them. You don't shrug your shoulders, you tilt your head to the side and you watch her, you remember. You reach out, but you can't touch the skinned wolf upon her body. You can't tear her throat out with your teeth and you would sacrifice more than just your mobility on a red alter to answer that call of that opportunity. To dance to the chorus of vengeance. Instead, she asks questions and you can't help but think; she becomes a catalyst for reasoning.

Euley asked questions, so many questions -- ("Why'd you accept the alliance invitation? Why'd you fuck me if I wasn't worth your time?")

You forget, you remember; she killed Euley.

You see a mirror when you look at Stella, an extension of what you once were; something innocence metamorphing into something drenched in blood. Counting your ribs like you counted the pages in that broken scripture, counting the stars and waiting for one of them to fall just so you could wish to be free. Wish for food, wish for his boot to stop leaving bruises on your skin. Your broken hand trembles. You look at Stella and see a mirror; a broken, but beautiful mirror.

"I suppose, something to that sentiment. I think I just wondered if you had what it took to kill," you begin your ascent through this graveyard once again. A slow but steady step, ski pole maintaining your balance. "And it turns out you did, you did."

You tear indifference from your vocal chords and listen to something. Just for a moment.

Agony flickers; indifference becomes your armour.

"I am not here to tame your darkness, I am here to live in it."

Her next throw hits your centre but fails to cut into your core. You cough and step backwards, catching yourself on your ski pole once more, and stare at her through a dead lense. Violet's final gift to you, accepted graciously from her corpse's cold fingers, is seared open and threatens to crumble. The remainders of the snake's skin cling desperately to your torso and the bee perches on your shoulder.

You remember things clinging to your torso -- until you don't.

You focus on your vendetta, your unjustified anger; her death wasn't yours to lose. But that's what drives your movements, keeps your autocratic joints moving; the dead wolf's howl, a dead girl's song for vengeance. You traverse across this frozen graveyard; you camped here once. An alliance so strong it could tear down a galaxy.

An alliance so dead it doesn't belong in the stars.

Just Aeson, just dying -- that's how you like it.

Stella stands in the ruins of a kingdom, structures that terrorized this arena, a four-man army in a crusade against the weak. Isaac cleaving Vesper's arm off, Violet carrying a legacy, Euley's controlled storm and you.

Stella's built a fortress in this ruin, your old camspite. Along the castle walls, she lines the battlements with fur and lets Euley Sarasin's corpse hang. A declaration of what you've lost -she was never yours to lose because no one is worth giving yourself to- and what you stand to gain. You roll your shoulders and sneer; this isn't a crusade for holy ground. This is a vendetta for satisfaction.

You're chaos incarnate; living to destroy structures and claim the ruins of kingdoms as yours. You will pull Stella's structures down, pull the wolf's pelt from her cold corpse and happily call it ruination.

Mirrors are fragile things; they inevitably shatter.

A forced smile, like pulling teeth from the lips of your broken mouth. Agony becomes your second skin. "If that's how you intend to live in it," another step, another flickering flame. Your hand does not shake when you point your final flaming ski pole at Stella's bleeding form. "Then I'm afraid you won't survive long."

A dead wolf howls from within the inferno.

[dars]

I think I lost my mind a while ago
'Cause I've been seeing some ghosts
And I'd be lying if I told you I'm fine
But I lie

You do not smile when Stella's face is caught by the fangs of your solar flare.

Stitches tear from her cheek and tears run; her mouth opens to unveil a scream from within her core. She tends towards the boundary of her pain tolerance but you don't have another laugh left to give.

A scream like that was ecstacy, once. The sight of crimson chains coiling themselves around someone's porcelain skin, a scarlet shade constricting itself around flesh and tears. You feel ten years old, and there's nothing you relish more than the sight of someone's salted tears. Burying your feet in sandcastles, pulling the head from someone's dolls; your madness began as a seed then grew into snakeroot. You used to smile, at the sight of tears, and you should smile at the sight of Stella's tears cutting her raw flesh.

You hope she feels it, beneath her hands scrambling at her face and clutching her skin. You hope she feels it, not because Euley probably felt it, but because this is just who you are. This is just how you move, to a song of agony, driven by a chorus of vengeance. You carry your own banner, an uncountable number of heads on spikes.

"Not so pretty anymore," you do not smile, and pleasure fails to drop into your tone. "Sorry about that." But sarcasm and snark make their home. Scarlet crackles, devoured by the flames of the ski pole melting the snow on the ground, but you're already shifting the majority of your weight on your next ski pole. You do not tear your eyes from her form, you watch and you wait. You listen.

"Do you plan to take me with you when you fall, Aeson?"

Oh, how far you've already fallen. From innocence itself crushing beneath the weight of broken scripture, to humanity whithering as you dye it shades of scarlet and ichor. And everything inbetween, impaling an extension of home along your ski pole, finding Euley, losing Euley.

(She was never yours to lose)

You've fallen so far and you're still falling, but you have no desire to rise.

"I don't fall," because you're Aeson Kight and no one in this world is worth falling for. Nothing in this world is worth falling for. Yet you've always fallen, through a crevasse of darkness for twelve years and you were petrified you would hit the ground but also terrified you would rise. Because you do not know if you will have the privillege of putting yourself back together if you hit the ground. "But if I have to fall to drag you to the ground then that is a price I will happily pay."

For obvious reasons.

As you step forwards, she kicks out -- you see parallels as the wolf unveils its fangs and strikes silver.

You do not stumble at the sudden pressure of parallels. The last remnants of the trophy you carry, Violet's scales, crumble from your torso and you clench your jaw. Parallels, polarization -- this is a cycle of a lost past and shattering present. You're brought back to your situation twenty-four hours prior, when Violet took your mobility as a price for you taking her life. You bite your cheek and heft your spear.

"Your kicks are almost as good as Euley's," you speak through narrowed eyes and an empty tone. "Almost."

You do not soar on the wings of blood lust, you do not fall to the weight of parallels; you focus on the silver crescent that burns a caustic trail into Stella's skin.

[dars]

I think I lost my mind a while ago
'Cause I've been seeing some ghosts
And I'd be lying if I told you I'm fine
But I lie

Another shattered bone, she catches you at your weak spot, you catch yourself on the fall.

Agony blooms bitter in this valley of broken things.

"There's nothing after. There's no tomorrow. There's no home."

Just like what Violet said, that when you die you'll just disappear. She wanted to be the girl who made you disappear, making the weak declaration before plunging the spikes of her crampon into your back.

You bled scarlet, not ichor.

Just like you bleed now, into the snow.

"It's a good thing my heart was never in home, it's in murder." In the defiance of scripture written by a fading god, in the writhing of lacerations and the rhythm of agony. You live for broken bones and empty pleasures, not tomorrow. Men like you don't live long -- that's just how it's meant to be. For had you stayed in Six, it was only a matter of time before a personification of your own mortality caught up to you. That your throat was opened in your sleep, your blood spilled in gutters.

But you swore, you would smile when you downed poisoned that was picked for you.

But you cannot smile through this, the sight of your bone shattering in a second place and the world spinning on its as the snow threatens to swallow you whole. Stella spoke that fact herself, Euley was tired by the time Stella found her. Her crown beginning to rust, her scepter of ice beginning to melt. You're all tired, you're all desperate.

But you're not desperate to follow the banner of home, you're not desperate to answer the call of home and follow the banner of Six. This is not a redemption story. This is a vendetta, a crusade for satisfaction, a quest to spill ichor.

And you had, for the blood of a Salazar marks your body. The arms of your solar flare have scarred Stella's face and left her raw; the world will know you were there.
You're a sentient being, a nameless beast; falling in a valley of parallels and never praying to soar.

White hot pain, gritted teeth; you're so tired.

Just waiting for someone to take you to it.

"We're all tired, we're all dying," you pull yourself forwards, weight against your ski pole and blood on your teeth. She speaks of fictional titans and bones creaking beneath weights, but this doesn't belong in the world of mythology. "But there's a difference between me and Euley, because I don't care about home." You laugh, bitter and broken. They see you, something beautifully twisted.

You take aim, you ignite.

"I don't know what I want, but I do know this. No one's managed to finish me off in eighteen years," you speak through gritted teeth and agony that blooms bitter. "I don't care about tomorrow, I don't care about after."

You never wanted forever; you'll never be eternal.

"I just want this."

You sign off the sentiment with scarlet stained snow.

[dars]

I think I lost my mind a while ago
'Cause I've been seeing some ghosts
And I'd be lying if I told you I'm fine
But I lie

You are a vengeful spirit, Aeson Kight.

(A lost man)

You step over the cub you slaughtered, the the pack you left behind but still allow your movements to be driven by a dead wolf's howl. Fight to push away the feeling of her nails against digging into your skin, her claws against your throat. The white veil her over her face when you shoved her into the snow, the touch of her lips against yours before you left her; somehow striking a chord deeper than hollow but never quite managing to resonate in this hollow chest of yours.

Yet here you stand, a vengeful spirit -- a lost man. But you never gave yourself.

(No one's worth it)

But you fight anyway.

Not for profit but for satisfaction, not for survival but for something.

A lost man, twisted and despicable.

("You're not a good man, Aeson Kight.")

Your vengeance leaves a twisted sneer across her thigh and boils blood against her skin. There's satisfaction, blood lust, behind your movements. As if this is no different to the alleyways of Six, no different to holding your knife against a dying man's throat and listening to him sob as you push hot metal against his skin. Satisfaction, but no pleasure derived from the splitting of skin, nothing to be seen in the beauty.

Any sound made, drowned by a vengeful chorus -- the whimper of a dead wolf.

"I think I want this more than you, Aeson. I can see it in your eyes. You're barely holding it together. A thread could be pulled and you would collapse."

You would disappear.

A step forwards, a crack and a low grunt of pain as you catch yourself. White hot but dull, pulsating across your collar bone and tearing into your skin. You catch yourself.

You refuse to lose yourself.

"That was more than just a thread pulled," you speak, words pulled like teeth from your corpse. "But I'm still standing." Eighteen years, and some of them cried about a hell you'd be going to, some of them spat venom.

Ava's hand pulling at your back, whispering demands and watching you dance.

Watching you hack. Watching you tear. Watching you kill.

You're a vengeful spirit, a lost man.

("You're not a good man, Aeson Kight.")

Never eternal -- you spot Aeryn's face in the snow.

"Eighteen years I've been waiting for someone to make me disappear," you drag yourself closer, pulling the threads of your sanity from your loose skin and towards the skinned wolf's pelt. So close you can touch it. "I don't think you have what it takes."

No one has what it takes to send you to that special place in hell.

("But you were worth it.")

The reaper takes you by your hand and guides you through the snow, a frozen graveyard for ashen corpses. You taste brimstone and spit hellfire. You're chaos incarnate, spelling notations for hellfire and suffering in your blood.

This is not your death rattle, but your war cry.

[dars]