Bereft: Demise

61 (pt. 1) | Of a Fallen Voice

He went to tap one of those cut fractals roving through the air, but it fizzled in a puff of green, acrid smoke before he could touch it.

"You make excuses!"

"I give what they need. How do you expect them to survive immortality if they cannot survive and handle Balthazar, one of their own?"

My frustration left in a strained moan of defeat. I'd been warned the Baal was capricious, that he'd sooner kill them all for the trouble than help settle their problems. I was a fool for trying to entreat his assistance.

The longer I stood in silence, the more I considered his words and their meaning permeated my thick skull. I would see cruelty in all he did—but I wasn't immortal. I couldn't fathom the reasoning of an ancient creature like the Baal, and yet...some intrinsic part of me that was older than my flesh and bones understood.

The Baal's inattentiveness wasn't an act of passive-aggression or malice. The Sins faced tribulations of a massive scale and would continue to face more if they survived. By removing his aid, by refusing his cooperation, the Baal forced the Sins to act on their own cognizance. Like a mother bird coercing her chicks from the nest, he obliged them into solving their own dilemmas and into becoming hardier—if more bitter—monsters.

Those chicks would either fly or fall to their deaths.

Even as part of me understood him, the majority of my human consciousness reviled him. I hated him because of what he'd done to Darius.

"That's why you tortured him, isn't it?" I said, stepping back from the fading light of the flames. "Not because you wanted to assert your will or because he broke your stupid rules. You did it because you wanted to remake him. You conceived the theoretical idea of creation, but you failed in the execution. You seek to break your toys and to make them into better versions. I get that now."

His boots were silent upon the floor as he neared, his presence an ominous, encroaching threat. He wasn't smirking now. Tap, tap, screech. "They are not toys."

"No, they're not. You once told Peroth things cannot be remade, only reborn—and yet I don't think you fully understood your own meaning, because you're still seeking to remake them. To remake...those." I pointed into the shadows towards those unseen things as I continued to retreat. Every instinct in my body screamed to run from him. "Perhaps, like me, you've said the words so many times they've simply lost meaning—but I'm beginning to understand. They cannot be remade. They can only be reborn. The trimming from the plant. The broken can never be the same again."

The Baal snarled. The sound was ungodly, like the vengeful scream of a tortured wildcat set free upon its captors. His power had surrounded me, and suddenly it drew taut as chains. He'd been before me, standing like a statue at the table's edge, and then he was everywhere. His clawed hand was at my waist, the other holding my arm above my head as he forced me to stare into those eyes that shone like dying suns.

"You see much, little shadeborn," he quietly laughed. "Perhaps too much."

"What I've never figured out—," I managed to choke past my rising panic. "Was why you came to me. Why me?"

His lips parted enough to reveal the tips of lupine teeth. "Ahh, and I thought that was obvious. It had nothing to do with you. I reached for Darius's mind, and found...yours."

The Baal twisted me within his punishing grip until I was turned around. Behind me, standing there as if he'd been there the entire time, was an image of Darius. Blue-eyed and confused, the image of Darius kept his attention on the Baal as his pale lips formed soundless words.

"Darius!" I cried as I lunged for him only to have the Baal to restrain me. I struggled, bare feet striking Veleph's shins and boots as his talons bit into my thin arms. "Let go!"

To my surprise, he did let go—and I stumbled into the Sin of Pride's image. The image's hands snapped up at the last second to catch my shoulders as if it hadn't been aware it could do so. His fingers felt cold and solid against my flesh.

"Darius," I called yet again, and the image finally dropped its arctic gaze from the Baal. The face was familiar, and yet the expression was one of befuddlement and didn't contain an ounce of recognition. It wasn't Darius. Not entirely.

After finding my balance, my fingertips grazed the cool skin of his cheek as I sought anything of the Darius I knew in this mirage's visage. I sought his anger, his cynicism, his pride, and found nothing. Somehow, it made seeing the Sin all that much more painful.

The image's blue eyes dimmed as my hand slipped away. Color bloomed in his face as red swept through his irises and stole the cold, emotionless blue until naught but the furious crimson remained.

His voice caught up to the shift in color like noise chasing light. "Sara."

Darius's image disappeared. I gasped when I lost his support and crumpled to the floor, managing to catch myself before I could bash my face into the stones. The Baal's merciless laughter tore a growl from my lungs as I rolled to my side to see him where he'd last been. He held his arms apart before his chest, and between his clawed hands appeared a cracked mirror.

The pale, tired woman reflected in the silver glass had one blue eye, and one red.

Shocked, I felt for my own eye and saw black, taloned fingers trace my skin.

The mirror swiveled, then shattered to iridescent dust.

"You're welcome." The Baal smirked as he straightened and returned to the room's throne. His boots remained silent as the grave, as if no sound dared mark his passage.

"Wait—!" I yelled, panting as I went to rise and found my legs too unsteady to bear my weight. "Wait, tell me what it means—!"

The vision waned as the blackness stretched forth and crawled nearer its dread father. Only the delineation of his towering form against the windows bathed in blue fire was visible. His shadow was thrown from the breadth of his shoulders like a cape meant to cover and shroud all of the world.

"Wait—!"

The chitter and chatter of his unformed children robbed me of my voice as the dark became a tangible thing.

"King of dirt and earth and bone!"

"King of shade meant to atone!"

"My King of war, my King of yore—!"

"The shadows, the night, the world you sow!"

"Forever the dark in which we sleep—!"

"My beloved King Below!"

Something had its clammy hands on my ankles. I kicked and fumbled for purchase on the smooth floor, but the darkness was a riptide I couldn't outswim. As its rapids overcame the hall and the Baal's children dragged me into the shadows, I screamed his name.

The Baal began to turn, then paused as his smoldering gaze found mine.

I think he heard me.