Desreal: To Alshain: from nothing you come, to nothing you return.

He is there, in the woods, weak, traitor Alshain, and she listens;

The fire comes from nowhere, the fire that burns in the heart of the earth and the core of stars – her fire, her soul, her will, and she threads it with care, a spider’s web, knotting and twining and burning, oh, how it burns, and how she delights in it, in her hell.

Her fire, her world, her love, sheet after sheet of it, her lines, her unbreakable chains, they burn – and they touch, they rend, they squeeze, they burn, oh, how they burn –

How does it feel, Alshain, to feel the pain you caused revisited through your blood and your winds, burning deep down to your bones? How does it feel to know you are so close to the end, that a thought would break your limbs or squeeze your neck tighter and tighter, until you can no longer breathe? Her coils tighten, taunt as snakes, and they press, incandescent, against his throat; other chains seek his feet, binding them lovingly, almost delicately.

A thought, and he will be brought down, hogtied and paralyzed and burning. A thought, and his throat will crumble, and he will choke in his own blood – charred, as she savors the stink of flesh and fur.

She cries as she moves, light upon her hesitant feet: she is weak, so very weak, and her whole body trembles with the tension of her weakness. The earth surges beneath her, weakly – and she knifes through his mind, light-quick, her eyes aglow with something undefined.

Fear, perhaps, despair, perhaps, but more importantly, pain.

“Ah, Alshain,” she sighs, swaying gently upon her legs, lost beyond all sanity, lost beyond all strength, “why did you have to be so weak, why?”

Pain, pain, pain, it courses through her veins, it runs in her nerves, and stretches, languid, shaking the haze from her mind. She is weak, she knows, and she will soon die; the promise is sweet in her tongue, her mind, and she rejoices, oh, how she rejoices. “You should never have revived, Alshain. In death, you were proud, and strong; in life, you are nothing. To nothing you will return, then.”

And, smiling, she shuts her eyes, and her strains burn, and burn, and squeeze tighter and tighter;

kalleis;
pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;
death tingled with blood, and was life.