“You have broken taboo, or so I hear. Again.” Lucian appeared, and with his presence – the others retreated. Tyr could feel them circling, warily, one eye on their supposed quarry and the other on one of the few figures large enough to stand beside Astarte and the others. All predators observing the food chain, as the silent divines hunched over the two nim below them in great interest. “I heard my Lord's call for the first time in over a century, and Octavian himself sent me here to address you. Is it true?”
“Your Lord? Thought you didn't worship gods.” Tyr twitched, but he was beyond the point of confidence. He couldn't defeat a bonafide sword saint, but Lucian couldn't kill him either. There was no reason to fear when even the primus' themselves couldn't see it done. It was all a haze, what mission he'd just ran off on, but he'd known from the beginning that it wasn't his. The others had told him to do it. The voices. And they were screaming at him to suck the light from a new target now. Lucian had so much of it, with that power, Tyr could...
No. Not today.
He was in control again, and soon it wouldn't matter.
They were not permitted to touch his reins every again.
“Sunhammer.” Lucian replied evenly, his eyes took stock of the surroundings, peering up at the incredible heights of the nexus within the Orik city and whistling. To think that Jartor knew of this place and had never sent anyone to investigate it. That was strange, there were few unknowns in this world. They'd long combed the depths of practically every dungeon, forgotten city, and more. Then again, the world was a big place, and there were some locations like this that held secrets not meant for man.
Hidden from sight by clever hands. Fortunately, Tyr had done a decent job cleansing it of taint, burning it all away years ago and returning to fix the error. More than Hastur had ever done, in Lucian's opinion.
“I am no paladin, but he lifted me up when I fell, and it hasn't been so bad.”
“Aotrom?” Tyr raised an eyebrow. Aotrom was the twin brother of Vestia, a god of light. Warrior god, patron of promises and duty and all of that, they all seemed to represent the same things with little difference. Technically speaking, the gods of light and darkness were not considered elemental in nature. As in, they weren't kin to the 'natural' gods more commonly worshiped in Haran, Lyra, and Oresund. Sunhammer, they called him, a god that only cared to answer humans, his worship wasn't widespread – but as with the others of his church, 'He' was far more popular in the south. The protector of mankind, the defender of the weak and innocent, the patron of all human paladins regardless of their denomination. He was the god who had invented the practice of traveling knights and monster slayers in the first place, and again, he only answered to humans. “He sent you to kill me?”
Lucian snorted as if amused by the question. “I don't engage in dialogue with villains. If that was the intent of the Guardian, I'd have struck without pausing to look about. I was sent here to allow him to see you through the eyes of his chosen, and that is all. Ultimately, I'm bound to obey, but he is a patron that does not force, I come of my own free will.”
“...And?” Tyr frowned, his fingers itching to grab his sword and have another go at Lucian. He'd lose, a million times, not a chance of beating him just yet. Tyr was a hero now, on the bottom rung of that classification at least in terms of his relative level of strength. If he were to somehow grasp that level of power necessary, he'd mana down and destroy himself beyond recovery. Existing as a ghost until he settled and possessed something or someone else. “What does our great patron of duty think of all that is me?”
“I think you are an egotistical, vain, and selfish boy.” Lucian spoke with another voice entirely. “I think you are more alike a broken beast than a man. And I think you are precisely what you were made to be. That you lacked the spine or identity to stand up to others when they sought to push you along a path of their choosing, long ago abandoning your own. Born cursed, and I pity you for that, my brother. I speak to all of you, and would even go so far as to implore your separate shards as well to leave the mind of an already suffering young man, if I knew they would. But you won't, will you? You need a host, and this one has had the ill fortune of collecting the worst lot of you.”
“Aye.” Tyr replied with another voice of his own, more than one all speaking at the same time. “Little brother, look how you've grown since last we met. Get out of my head. This one is so willful and rebellious, I'm not sure if he's one of ours. My eyes do not see as they used to. I AM IN CONTROL. Of course, of course. You are in control, oh mighty prince who has lost all significance and exists only to pursue our interests in lieu of your former puppet-masters. He speaks like a villain, but leaves out the fact that we serve as little brother does, in the defense of all mankind, but only we have the will to pursue what is necessary. You know perfectly well that we do no such thing, ha! This world is doomed if we succeed in aiding his vengeance. One world for many, this is the way of things, and thus it is good – is it not? We must see to a proper ascending of the shards within him. Don't be an idiot. An idiot!?” Tyr slapped himself in the face, recovering his senses. “Sorry, that happens sometimes, the more I eat – the stronger they get – but that's the point to begin with. You were saying?”
“Many are displeased by this action.” Lucian, or rather Aotrom, frowned. Crossing his arms, straight backed and full of intent to intimidate. “All of your actions. There are those who conspire behind closed doors to stop your ascent. They do not understand what it is you are trying to do, the others – my kin, understand it well. Many seek to stop you. Revealing yourself so soon was foolish, you have surrendered your greatest advantage. Secrecy. And now their children will come for you.”
“I disagree.” Tyr replied, the real Tyr – back in control again. For now. “My plans are finished, it doesn't even matter if I survive, or if they come. I have found all of the others and kept them close to me, protected and nourished them. Delaying the events that must come to pass was foolish to begin with, but I will correct this error. Reassert the balance.”
“What of this world?” Lucian asked, fully lucid while his god possessed him, both of them speaking from the same mouth and very aware of what Tyr was about. Engaging in a years long ritual, since the very beginning, what people called fate or destiny was a very real thing and Tyr was trying to cut his strings even if he remained unaware of the severity of his actions. “You know what will happen should you get your way, yes? What of your friends, family, loved ones? Thousands of years of culture and society? You are dooming the people of this world to the cruelest death of all. The ordering is not the work of good. Tyr, you were given a human life and that means you are better than this, no longer a slave. This is... A thoughtless culling. A genocide far worse than any concocted by the target of your petty revenge, is this not hypocrisy?”
“I am presented with two solutions, then.” Tyr said, mimicking the scales of law with his hands. “Allow the weakling fallen to have their way, slaughter innocent mages in an attempt to slow the cleansing. Or, alternatively, I take responsibility for it myself – arm the world appropriately to survive it, and if all goes to plan – avoid it entirely. If not, we fight, and they get a real chance at it – one your gods would never give them. Is it not my duty to pluck the wings of the great moth himself?”
“You couldn't possibly be trying to--!” Aotrom was gone, and so was the body he'd inhabited. Tyr had full run of this place, just as Jurak once had. A shame he couldn't shut those self-righteous fools on the surface up. Ah... Who was in control now? He wasn't sure anymore, it was hard to know, they were all him.
“I need your help, and you need mine.” Tyr said, to all of them. All of the gods. Even those who many considered dark or evil. He didn't truly know what he was. In the past, long ago, before mankind had even existed on any planet orbiting a star, he'd been some sort of... Calamity. A thoughtless scourge, the right hand of the 'ordering' – if not the 'ordering' itself, distilled. Things had changed, and so had he. All men were gods, and presumably there were gods out there who were stronger than he was, or as strong – Tyr as he'd been had been the highest if 'strength' was the comparison. If they could hear him, it couldn't hurt. If anything, he knew many would come for his head, and slowing them down through dispute between kin was fine by him.
Let them bicker. They would wane.
Tyr could only wax from here on out.
“I know you love your children, or perhaps love only their faith, but you are too far away. Your powers here are weak. Aid me with what you can, and those who choose the right side this time will find a door in the future to be about the work as you used to. Those who do not, I will do what I was created to do. Whether in this world, or the next. A week, a month, a year, or a billion from now – I will find you – whatever piece of you still exists. I will not forget. Remember the judge, We will come for those who do not heed this simple warning.”
Tyr felt conflicting emotions coming from those addressed. Those above. Some agreed with shallow nods, but he couldn't tell which, they were all mere half shadows. He wasn't alone in his knowledge of how precarious their situation was, they'd been playing at their games on this world and many beyond it for eons without being corrected for their depravity. The Lightbringer had given them thought, and with thought came ego, with ego came disposition and dispute. An eternal war for souls, a ghastly fear of the ordering, and those who sought to return to the old ways versus the new.
But what were the 'old ways'? These divine beings were more stubborn and nostalgic than men themselves. The cosmos had undergone a thousand iterations and each of them had their own opinions regarding which one was the best.
Tyr didn't even know what he was saying. The others knew what 'the ordering' was but they wouldn't tell him, allowing him to speak on things he didn't understand. As long as it followed their line of thought, they wouldn't protest.
An arrow didn't need to have its own opinion on matters, all that mattered was that it didn't miss.
Tyr would not miss.
Even if it meant losing everything, he'd skewer the heart and fulfill his destiny, but only in the way he wanted to. He'd been made the anti-child, but he was the hero in this story. There would come a time where every mouth would exalt his name, and if not, they'd come to fear him.
Like they used to.
--
Leo had always liked nature, perhaps only out of the spite he felt for his father and the city he'd been raised in. Most of all, it was the silence – especially during the winter time. No noise pollution, no trucks and cars and shouting people, no unpleasant aromas... Mankind wasn't meant to live in crowded metropolises like that, it was stressful and so very loud, all of the time.
Everywhere was all noise and he'd hated that. That's why he'd purchased a cabin up north, until the noise had come there as well, consumerist culture and building far beyond their needs. Granted, he was a hypocrite, in a way – but he'd still felt the melancholy of change wrought upon the world... Returning, just to see more trees cut down, the roads that used to be framed with towering pine trees were all condominiums now.
But they didn't come in the winter.
They hadn't come in a long, long time.
Just him, boots crunching through the snow – a frozen lake and his only guest of the day being a startlingly white moose snuffling lazily through the drifts. Looking for something, Leo didn't know what this 'something' was, but neither seemed intent to bother one another and so all was good. Silence so whole it had a loudness all its own, to literally hear the quiet was such a bizarre concept, but it was real. Leo loved the silence, wishing it would last forever.
And it would, if he'd truly wanted it to, all he had to do was say the word.
But he could not speak.
Forest as far as the eye could see, the wide trunks of trees and green needles hanging low with the weight of a blizzard that must've passed through so recently.
He liked it like this. Leo liked it a lot.
What the world could be like if there were no people in it, a concerning line of thought but no less valid in his head. How worthless they all were. Leeches with just enough brainpower to create single use plastics and summarily hurl them into the ocean. His father had once heard Leo ramble on about his... 'Opinions', heavy on the quotation marks in William Coleman's mind, and he'd called his son a fool. Leo, who seemed to believe he could make it in the wild, as if he'd last even a single day. But he had, or... He thought?
How long have I been here?
Years.
There were no people, not anymore, just him and the few creatures that dwelt in the woods. Eternal partners in a winter that ran on infinitely and had never seen a thaw, and yet there were rabbits. Leo would trap them, snapping their necks and sliding a well used skinning knife along the belly, emptying it of offal and ensuring to remain far from the bladder lest he spoil the meat. He'd leave that by the lake for the foxes, he'd never seen one but something would come to take it all away in the night. Spitting it on a stick shaved free of bark to hang over a smoking pit present under the roof of his porch. It wasn't much, but it worked, though he could honestly say he missed salt.
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Not people, though. The moose and the trees and the rabbits were enough for him, forever, quiet solitude and no bonds with anything sans his equipment. Leo had no idea where they'd all gone, one day there just... Hadn't been. The world was empty and primal again, only he, man against nature – though in most situations nature seemed to be the only thing truly concerned with keeping him alive.
There'd been others, in a manner of speaking. A bear with the most miraculous red fur, stark against the white of the snow, it had come and Leo had killed it. Stitching himself back up with fishing line and bedridden for weeks, perhaps he should have died alongside the thing. Even though he'd known it was necessary, he missed the great beast and the fear it inspired.
But he didn't die, couldn't, not ever, marching on. Someone had left the carcass of the bear on his doorstep, knife holes punched through its neck, and Leo had gorged on the fatty meat and gristle. He was always hungry, one thing that remained consistent was the gnawing hunger.
Wolves, too... They'd mostly left him alone, for years now they'd merely roamed about, but they'd come for the bear's corpse and Leo had killed them just the same. It was all meat, he wouldn't chase but he would protect his territory as aggressively as he needed to, and the moose helped. They were afraid of the moose, all creatures seemed to be save the raven that made its home on the eave of Leo's cabin. It, too, was white – stark and vivid with shining eyes and an incessantly aggravating 'caw' – always returning no matter how many rocks Leo had thrown at it until he'd abandoned the idea of chasing it off.
Father Raven, with its carefully guarded secrets.
There were the owls too. Five of them, they'd come in the night and stare at him through his window, but they didn't bother anyone. There wasn't anything to bother, Leo had known them all his life it seemed, and had no interest in throwing stones at them. The owls, the white moose, the raven, and the moths that fluttered in the twilight beneath the stars. The owls and the ravens both would tear that swarm of insects apart but it would always return. That, and the unidentifiable eyes in the darkness, Leo never went out in the night time, something about it felt so... Not terrifying, no... The mysteries it contained were so profoundly bizarre, alien, visible only through his windows, that he couldn't attribute it to fear of the unknown. There wasn't a word for how uncomfortable those things made him, glinting eyes and teeth that couldn't hope to enter unless invited. Fel things, or so the moose claimed.
It spoke to him, though in no discernible voice, it was all... A haze, perhaps he was going insane – it wasn't the worst fate.
Over the years, they'd all gathered here – beasts of all shapes and sizes until his tiny place in the world was swarming with them. Anywhere else was just... Empty, beyond his valley there was nothing but more frozen water and trees as far as the eye could see. No animals whatsoever, and he'd always found that a bit strange, where he walked, the others would follow, and they were the only ones.
It didn't seem to be the cabin specifically that they felt safe in, but rather around he himself, perhaps these were his true and only friends. Or perhaps he was simply their protector, a symbiotic relationship of sorts where the owls and raven would kill the irritating moths, and bring him small things.
Whatever he needed, it'd show up eventually, be that a new axe after he'd broken his last or the fishing line he'd sewn his torn flesh up with. He didn't quite know where it'd come from, but it didn't really matter. Beneath the snow, perhaps, in some places it was miles deep and he'd avoided the holes in the ground as would be pertinent. Rather that than break a leg, he knew the others would aid him but they'd not go further than that, there were rules in this forest and the birds wouldn't break those.
Lonely.
Perhaps that was a word for how he felt, Leo was content enough but he remembered the times where he'd spoken with a voice – he'd forgotten at some point how to use it. He was small and weak, regressing down to the form of a tiny boy before she'd come. A violet haired girl arriving and knocking at his door in the densest blizzard he'd seen thus far, the roots and dirt of a seedling grasped firmly in her cupped hands. Knocking, and he'd answered her call for reasons he couldn't possibly articulate on, allowing her inside.
The first to ever enter his home, and she hadn't feared him as the others did.
She couldn't have been older than two or three years old by appearance, barely out of her toddler stages but she was a talkative one. Yet Leo knew this woman was just as old as he was, she'd been wandering for years looking for a place to plant her tree and he'd allow her to do so. Silently, she would speak but he would never reply, she didn't seem to mind. Digging up the frozen ground at her request and thawing it with fire, until miraculously, that single spot became soft and loamy.
Rich with life.
And with the planting of the tree came a miracle, though Leo would've told anyone who'd listen, had he the voice to do so, that he'd almost immediately regretted the action. It was for her, though, and thus he'd come to accept it, she was all he had. With the tree came others, more beyond counting, until his cabin was swarming with so many little things. Tiny people in droves, building their homes amidst the boughs that stretched off the face of the earth, its roots expanding over the years to seat themselves above his home like an extra roof. At times, he'd climb the tree, to see what was happening beyond. He wanted to know...
The snows melted, life returning to the valley, but beyond it were only moths. Fluttering wings, a swarm of them eclipsing the horizon, unable to come any closer, and amidst that swarm were figures... A man that seemed made of beetles and scorpions, a single piercing eye only visible in the night time, and the night itself that seemed alive, a man of shadows clutching a ticking clock with a crack along the glass face. Each year, as the tree prospered, the crack seemed to get bigger.
Leo knew that they'd come when the clock finally broke, and he almost wished they would – it'd be loud for a little while but after that it'd be quiet again. One way or another. He liked being with her, she was a balm to his battered spirit, but the others...
They were loud, and neither he nor the moths liked that very much.
Their voices were white hot nails piercing his eyes and igniting every nerve in his body.
A day would come where she'd ascended the tree, a vast distance that would eclipse the entire known cosmos and infinite layers of all the various realities. He could not follow, it was too high for him and at the peak of it was only light, light that burned and hurt him, a kingdom of heaven that remained barred to Leo. They didn't hate him, he could see their smiles and waving hands, they seemed happy – but someone had to remain low with the moose and the ravens and the owls. To keep the wolves and bears away, Leo supposed.
The day did come, where she would leave him. He wanted to beg her to stay, this lady of black and white, but she could not – she was to be risen to join the rest and was not meant to be kept low. It was his duty to remain, and hers to ascend, that was the way they were made. But she'd leave him a gift to remember her by, a long bladed knife worked with a single rune depicting a pointed arrow, though not one of skinning.
And its name's were Dawnbreaker, bringer of the sun, Tyrfing, simply law – the distillation of right and wrong. A piece of her black and white defined by his own eternal vigilance over the quiet, his calm sentinel in maintenance of the lower bits of the tree.
Where he'd remain, tossing stones at their newest guest, a black serpent of immense size that dwarfed him, and yet it feared.
It should.
He hated the snake that became the walls of the valley, it was everything he had come to revile.
Fate, destiny, the absence of true choice, and yet it was a guardian the same as he was.
He didn't know why, but he would not speak with it. Never would its voice taint his ears.
Alone again, taught the importance of companionship only to be abandoned. He hated that, but he hated those moths even more, for without them she could have stayed. The lantern need not be lit if dark things did not exist to fear it.
A time came when they'd point, the crack had grown evermore larger and Leo was whispered to by those above.
And so he'd wander, through fields of flesh and mountains cast of tiny little skulls, color itself given form until he was walking on a bridge of all hues of the rainbow. Eternally, more time had passed than ever before and yet he did not stop. Couldn't. She'd never come back down to him unless he slew what slithered, traversing spaces of unquantifiable distance in a grand hunt like nothing before. The first reaping.
If he did this impossible thing, the lady of black and white would return, she'd sing him songs again and lull him to sleep – they could take care of the tree together, he didn't want to be alone.
All that was left was to find the enemy.
To rip and tear.
Break them.
He'd find many. In their thousands, of forms indiscernible to his eye and yet he'd make them real simply to cut and bite at them, flayed corpses made a monolith to expand the valley. His blade burning with the radiance of all the suns that had ever existed, enforcing on the very concept of chaos the necessity of order.
With every death life would bloom, a blue woman with wings would come and smile down at him, waving as those overhead had done so long ago. She'd rip away the madness left in his wake and Leo would see her again, his lady of black and white, his... Partner. She would bring life, defining baser concepts and enforcing the cycle on this new land he'd freed for her, and with each victory came a reward until that became his entire reason for existing.
Just to see her smile, the others were nothing, she was everything.
He was a slave, that was all he'd ever known – endless service for fleeting glimpses.
Obsessed with a path that seemed to have no end, it was eternal. A one man army that prowled the cosmos in all the darkest places to rip away corruption, a mad thing cast to fight the maddest of all. The great Moth and the laughing one, the one who watched and the walking swarm. All of their various children, aberrant mimicries of life that he hated so and for no discernible reason other than the noise they made. Cracking their shells, slurping of their insides, building monuments of their broken corpses to the ones above. All in a vain hope that it had to end one day, time had come and with it came an end.
Kinslayer.
Even as he served them, they feared him.
God eater.
Even as he protected the tree, they reviled him.
End bringer.
Even as he too lay split and broken in a field of ashes they'd forsaken him.
Only the owls remained, perched upon his shoulders and never leaving his side.
She'd stopped coming eons ago, and he'd long forgotten her face.
All he knew was the hunt and kill.
The cut and stab.
The rip and tear.
The finish, and he'd come to learn from the wild things within that mass of madness. Knowledge, to know more than the simple concepts of eating and filling himself, forbidden things. Some of those above had aided him in various ways, teaching him, and they weren't supposed to do that – thus they were punished. The Red Woman, a bag of bones that named herself Death, and always the owls and raven that whispered in his ear.
We are your friends, they said. Nobody and nothing else, only we. Slay the prime ones, those makers of us and allow us to roost as they do. We wish to see the light, do you not wish for rest as we do? Have you not toiled enough?
They are not our masters.
He was triumphant.
Madness defeated, order come to all things, and he'd return a broken thing – flayed and single limbed to drag himself through the needle rich ground. Trailing what bits of him yet remained, a blackened man of splintered bone and wounds that would not heal. A specter, not much of it was left, he'd given his all simply to hear her voice again – returned their savior, for he was the only one who could strike so deadly a blow against the Great Enemy.
But they would not proclaim him a hero, they would wave and smile no longer – all they'd offer in terms of reward were a thousand chains and the bottomless pit they'd cast him into.
Why must I suffer? I have done as you ask, I have given everything – why are you doing this to me?
All that he would receive were scornful glares, they were disgusted by what he'd done.
And yet still they'd enforce on him new duty.
The battle the serpent for all time. He was the End, that is what he'd been made for – but these things didn't want an end. They were happy in their tree, planted by the woman, shaped by the raven, protected by the wolf below all. The struggle was his task, they hadn't wanted for him to end it, and so they'd return the moths at twice the intensity and their world would shrink yet again.
Why?
Learning to hate and fear destiny, far madder than those beyond had ever been. For why should destiny apply to he, bringer of law?
And those chains they'd bound him with would become his path, bloody hands scrabbling at their midnight surface. Ascending, crawling free from the pit, a howl that would shake and splinter at the bark of their great Yggdrasil, and all would scream. In terror, fright, anger at this most foul abandonment of duty, races beyond counting and those that would call themselves the First. He'd continue that climb, into the light that scorched and blinded him, he had slain the serpent, shattering it into a thousand pieces and taking of its flesh.
He had smashed disorder, breaking chaos over his knee.
The endless cycle interrupted for the first time, before such a thing had ever been a construct.
All in service to them, and yet they hated him.
He'd climb that tree, into the blistering light at the peak of it.
And in a grand exhibition of crimson, he would bathe all their halls in blood, cutting shapes into the bones of those ancient titans and making a wall of their corpses.
Smashing his makers from their starlit aeries.
This was his tree. It was not for them.
There was only one law in this universe.
The struggle.
To kill or be killed.
His law was all that mattered.
Strength was everything, and he had become the tallest of all – even the old raven, his father and highest of their 'lower' house had claimed so. The storm that walked, the great maw amongst the stars.
I will stake the writhing serpent, its movement most profane ceased for all time, and should it squirm I will break it again.
For I am eternal.
I will hang you from crosses so that those outside of my window might know what awaits them should they enter my domain once more.
All that the light touches will be mine forevermore.
I will pave the paths of my kingdom with your offal for the birds and the foxes to take in the night. Let the small things eat, knowing that I will allow them to do so as long as they remain quiet, let the moose do as he wants with the rest.
I will pluck the wings of angels and hang their skulls around my belt, you will see as I see and you will do as I do. Witness me, with your curses and pointed fingers, your lamentations will become my clarion horn to any who wish to disturb this peace of mine.
Scream for me, eldest ones. Your words will become the howling of my wolfs, I will fill the stars with them until my eyes see all and my skin can feel the breeze on every individual world.
Into the pit you go, I will return simply to ensure you never rise as I did, nor live as I do, wither and weep as I have. I gave you an arm cast, silver, my eyes, become blind, my heart, made wooden, my stalking legs become swamped in the bones of your children.
I will slay gods and slake my thirst on the rivers of your blood, profane me for all eternity.
Fill my ears with sorrow and regret, I am deaf.
I will blind your eyes as you once did to me. Your colonies of ants that were stomped flat to protect your home, let them chew away until all is dust, I do not care. Ender of civilizations, a universe of ash – I will unmake all.
Sew shut your mouths so that you may command me not.
Take of your flesh, glut myself on you, make you nothing so that you might see everything – for I am law and you were nothing but obstacles along my path. Takers of mine, but no longer.
I am conquest eternal, foe breaker and ash bringer.
I am a monument to all your sins, mothers and fathers.
Roar for me, bear. Squawk for me, raven. Thunder for me, storm. Sing for me, lady. Stretch my skin and grant me your swarm of locusts with their harps and hauberks. Carve my flesh with your runes and seek to guide me to my fate, you have no power here any longer. Curse me, fear me, revile me, I am the carnage incarnate.
Darkest of all, taboo made manifest, god eater, the one who sunders. I am a cursed thing, this is what you have made me, but I will reforge myself in suns and bathe in victory until I am naught but an example by which to follow. I will become my own maker, and I will grant this great gift to all things around me. Who am I but the greatest of all things?
Seated atop a throne upholstered in the skin of your greatest works, I will cut them all. I will slay what slithers. I will do as I was made to, forever, and I will not complain. An end to the noise, the greatest evil of all.
Sing for me, little birds.
My wolves like the way you sound.
King of demons.
Lord of legions.
Shaped of lesions.
Bloody and screaming.
Hear their keening.
Witness the weeping.
Fear the reaping.