Bereft: Foretold

E | A Foretold Return

Beyond the open window waited the sleeping world.

The man leaned upon the stone casement to watch the violet stars paint trails of lavender across the dim sky. From the line of trees came the hushed whispering of a mid-season breeze and the smell of pine and oak infused with a verdant aroma. The city below was a dormant realm of white stone and running waterfalls, blue lanterns aflame at even intervals along the street.

Sleepless, the man removed himself from the window and retrieved a cloak of tightly spun silk. He tossed it about his proud shoulders and drew the hood up to hide his face. A colorless sword hung at his hip.

The man left his guarded tower to rove the silent street below. No citizens aside from him wandered at the late hour, so he wended his way along the pristine avenues in utter solitude. His boots were silent upon the smooth cobblestones, his gait an effortless reflection of refined grace.

He strode across a moonlit square toward a rectangular building of dark limestone and marble with a oxidized copper dome crowning its top. The cupola outside the dome housed a brazier of livid blue flame that showered the area in an eerie, transparent veil of watery effluence. An iron gate before the garden of lavender and lilies bore the building's name: Temple of the Wanderer.

The shrill cry of a hawk echoing across the square pulled the man to a stop before he could enter the temple's gardens.

He wheeled about to spot the avian predator perched on the cornice of an opposing building. The creature was larger than a typical hawk, its feathers a lusterless red, as if it'd bathed in old, cold blood.

"Why must you continued to follow me?!" the man raged as he ripped down his hood, revealing his face to the hawk and the cool light of the moon. Silver eyes shown with unrest and black hair fell in a curtain about his pointed ears. "Why do you haunt me?!"

Naturally, the bird said nothing. It only watched in recriminating silence.

"Do you want me to admit guilt? To acknowledge my mistake?" The man was sneering now, words laced with an inebriated lassitude he'd managed to hide well this evening. "To voice how it keeps me awake at night, knowing I'm the reason they died? Then, yes! Yes, you foul little creature—I am to blame!" 

This could not continue. Night after night, he lay awake remembering the betrayal in her eyes, reliving his own horror when he'd realized the demon had played him false. He woke often in his expansive bed in his room laden with gold and could not look at any of it, for it felt as if he'd bought it with her death and that it was covered in her blood.

He'd made a mistake, one committed in foolish, selfish desperation, and now he had to live with the guilt.

What can I do? What can I do? What can I do to make it right?

A circlet of silver-like metal glittered at his brow as the man bent at the waist to snatch a rock from the edge of the garden's path. He hurled it at the hawk.

Where the bird had once perched now sat a man with flaming red hair and keen eyes of polished bronze. He caught the thrown stone in one hand—and crushed it until only dust filtered through his fingers.

Lionel purred as he brushed off his palm and kicked his booted feet against the building's side. "What will you do, Vytian King? How will you repay the Uncrowned now?" 

What can I do? What can I do? 

Mind full of hatred and possibilities, Anzel Vyus turned again to the Temple of the Wanderer, his cloak flaring in the wind, and disappeared inside.

In the distance, against a golden horizon of a waiting dawn, resided a house of black spires. At the threshold waited a man with black hair and cyan eyes. Elias Gaspard removed a pocket-watch from his vest, inspected the hour, then retreated once more into the shadowy building.

"It is almost time."

- END PART THREE -