Bereft: Demise

23 | Of Bereft Creatures

The archive was arrested with shadows and heat, waiting in the dark for the careless treading of a passerby, undisturbed by breath or heartbeat. It remained, even after all these years, unchanged and uncaring. Grim, old. Alone. 

As the Sin of Pride lit a candle, he thought it was an apropos place for a creature like himself.

He held the thin taper of light up, letting its wan illumination fall upon his surroundings. The shelves and burrows stretched in all directions, filled and packed with all manner of items the Sin of Sloth had hoarded over the years. The full skeleton of a dragon was bracketed to the ceiling, its wings spread wide in windless flight. The dead beast had been moved to Terrestria one bone at a time over centuries of trade and negotiations, and now it was sequestered here, never to be seen by anyone but aging, mad creatures like Darius and Peroth.

There were books. Books of every size and shape, which wasn't surprising. Peroth had always been rather fond of books, tomes, and the written word. He hoarded them wherever he could. Darius could remember when they stole into the Isle's capital of Ufiil, where they had perused the estates of the Pensive—the grand council—while those bloodthirsty knife-ears had been in the south, campaigning against the Children of the Fire Wilds.

While some of his brethren had quickly grown bored and had gone to sample and steal the Pensive's wine, Darius remembered Peroth had remained in the library. Darius recalled the way the man's hands had flowed across those volumes, volumes that had long ago been reduced to cinders and bitter dregs of memories.

He remembered Sethan had loved the books as well. 

The Sin's brief exhalation resonated with aggravation. He continued through the stifling archive, the wax of the candle growing soft under his heated touch. The shelves leaned in upon him, towering into the immiscible dark untouched by his wavering light. What had begun as a desire to collect knowledge had turned into a mad obsession for Sloth. He no longer collected knowledge but stole words from the cusp of time's maw, hungry for their reminders of worlds and times far beyond his limited grasp. 

If a word was written, it was probably in this collection. Notes tossed aside by tired students, half-completed manuscripts by rejected authors, the inane scribbles of madmen carved into concrete walls—they all found their way here. It all lived in this wretched repository.

Blue feathered ravens clicked in the shadows, the candlelight reflecting off their plumage as Darius passed. Mage codices glimmered, excited by the Sin's fleeting presence, untouched by magical hands for a hundred generations. The witch grimoires were exceptionally hungry for readers, all but wailing in the abyss they had been thrown into. 

Mouths moved unseen in the aging trove, blind eyes resting upon Darius as he disturbed their unending solitude. Pride had the mad desire to set fire to it all, to burn every article, every book, every trinket and scrap of paper acting as a chain to Peroth's cage, to his throne. It would utterly destroy Sloth, but it would also set him free of these haunting reminders of things he could never have. 

Darius breathed in, drawing in the essence still permeating that place. The result was a noxious mix of a million different tastes and half-thought remembrances from a thousand different realms, all of it colliding in a mesh of cluttered madness. He spat upon the dirty floor. All of it was unhelpful in his search.

He came to a stop at the section of the archive he had been searching through before Sara's fear had pulled him away. The muscles in his jaw jumped at the reminder, but Darius discarded that train of thought as he laid his hand upon the first book. He sucked air through his teeth and let his eyes slide shut, waiting for the essence to process.