❛ what... have you become? ❜
the winds are merciless, as is the brimming disgrace of eos’s sanctified redeemer. painful sentiment borders haggard eyes, chiselling away at his composure whilst engraving scars into his pride, recollection, and awareness. disdain from the gods congregates as weighted vapours of the night, ramuh’s mutations of the sky forking in occurrences of hostile light. thunder articulates, discordant with the soundless hesitation of ardyn’s lungs. he shrivels, and wavers — disposition fragile beneath the downpour of the skies. balcony absorbs the nucleus of the storm, the caelum’s hold upon its railing taut with repentance. the heavens wane, remorseful of actions not entirely his own. nevertheless, exuded contempt falls hard within patter of torrent, soaking his anatomy and drenching his faded soul. he quivers from the water’s effects; reluctant to speak or to listen, to remember and to fear ( himself ). infinite are his damages, coiled within hands now foreign to his cerebral will. ‘ i did not mean to — ( yes you did ) — to hurt her … i had not … tia , she — ’
an illuminized crack lashes ambiguity of clouds, flogging his deliberation and maiming his concentration. as though the daemons cranking his psyche were not enough, the gods must now redeem their wounded; the goddess of the seas, left alone in his chamber upon conclusion of his hallucinogenic reason. never had he envisioned seizing her with an intent to kill; to strangle her as he had. hands wound her neck — like a barbed wire, to asphyxiate and expose illusory treason — only to find himself propelled off her form in the latest hours of twilight’s deliverance. she had the ability to defend herself, yet she had not; it was cor leonis, of all his nobility, to intervene and remove ardyn from atop the siren. she would have sooner perished by the callousness of his deviance — throttled by her king, garroted by her lover — than to oppose the degeneracy of his daemons. ‘ but why — ? she must know , she must know … it was not i who —— i did not intend … i would never … ’
his heart says he cannot survive another moment without her, yet his mind affirms she will not survive another incidence with him. ardyn’s morality — however much is left — is torn between the two like parchment doused in black ink; shredded out of mercy for its terminal stain. there are certain dyes you cannot remove; a pigment of fate, a punishment of the cosmos. clemency does not exist, not any longer for ardyn’s quailing purity.
“ what … have you become ? ”
assertion of struggling virtue — a gamble of stability — tremors his spine upon expression from the sentinel. he arches over the slick barrier opposite him, contemplating the alleviation of casting himself over balcony’s ledge. an attempt on his own life, for an attempt on another. he is not a murderer, yet he almost killed her. wayward sanity goads him to jump. they jeer — these voices of the scourge, all knowing — whilst mocking his anguish and deriding his consuming ache. an infection of the flesh; ardyn is unaware of his immortality. possessing him, he is fleetingly returned to the ‘ creature ’ responsible for tiamate’s assault. his pores discharge liquid obsidian, a blackness to the tears now wept along depleted cheeks.
“ —— A MONSTER . is that what you want to hear ? that my cruelty is no longer a matter of fiction , but a prowess of my transcendence ? you could never understand . not in the way you look at me — the way she looks at me — NO … ”
an eruption of the sky liberates his visage of obscurity, disclosing an otherwise secreted guise. the lightning defeats him, revelation of his adulterated integrity a vivid imperfection — onyx smears — across pallid features. had tiamate seen this before? a mysterious thought. for certain, via ramuh’s objective, this was the first of odin’s existence to bear witness to the chosen’s mutated self. but what of the goddess? it is unspecified; a nameless memory of her affection for the fallen; their ‘ healer ’.
“ i owe you no explanation . ”
