Ashes
1529 Words
Cora gasped and gazed at me appalled. For a moment. But then it seemed to connect. Her dropped jaw slowly closed and she swallowed visibly recoiling from Blithe. She blinked and pulled her hands away.
“Cora.” Blithe reached out for her but Cora clenched her fists and leaned away.
“Is this true?” Samwell’s gravelly voice sounded in our minds.
None of the three would answer. Blithe crumbled in on herself sobbing in silence. Lesley steeled himself in defiance rather than the appropriate shame and Phyllup just looked lost.
“Of course it is.” I scoffed.
“He’s been our staple pessimist since the beginning of time.” Lucas sneered.
“Say something!” Cora bellowed, her smokey wisps seeming to reach out and shake Lesley.
“What is there to say that could soothe such an abhorrent wound?” He grated through loosely clenched teeth.
“All this time and you’ve been the monster we feared returning.” Cora’s face scrunched and her chin tucked as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.
“It was you Lesley, who demanded I cast Ander away when the grey cloud passed. You claimed he failed to protect us.” Samwell’s eyes welled and his lip quivered though no words passed his lips.
“You didn’t fear what would happen if he didn’t go. You were terrified of what would happen if he stayed. You knew he would see you.” As he spoke he came across a thought. One that caused him to halt and turn his good eye to Lesley on a wide stare. “The fire.”
“You were blind far before you lost your eye.” Lesley straightened his spine and narrowed his eyes.
“Hundreds of people died!” Samwell thundered in our skulls slamming his fist on the table, nearly causing it to fracture.
“Nothing compared to how many needed to.” Lesley spat.
“How can you speak so ill of the people who loved you?” Cora gasped.
“Loved? They should have feared me! We weren’t put here to be loved. We were put here to rule!” He yelled gesturing to his sisters.
“I sensed something wrong inside of you.” Samwell shook his head.
“And still. You. Failed.” Lesley broke his words sitting forward. “Our city’s greatest ember and you just…went out. You failed to speak on such suspicions and here I am.” Lesley’s arms stretched wide. “Terror reigning.”
“Why?” Lucas asked.
“Isn’t the answer to that always so much easier than anyone claims?” Lesley raised a brow. “Why not?”
“You’ll stop this at once.” Samwell said forcibly. He moved to stand leaning into Lesley’s space.
A high pitched ringing slithered into the hair catching on gasps across the table. A terrified chortle tumbled from Phyllup’s throat and Ollie slumped into my side.
Samwell’s eyes folded around unshed tears as his weathered hands reached up to his throat. A crimson rivaling that of the tide outside pooled from his fingers. He moved to speak aloud and only sputtered a single word before he collapsed to the floor at Cora’s feet.
“Consume.”
Cora’s wails were matched only by Blithe’s. Her own sobs broken when she heard Samwell speak on choking gasps. Her arms swung blind as she crawled for him on the floor.
Lesley threw the soiled blade to the table top and began to distance himself from the others. His iron faced façade beginning to c***k. Phyllup wretched to see what her brother had just done. Lucas pushed past me his sword drawn.
Much like the cornered rat he was Lesley lashed out with a wave of green knocking Lucas to the ground, his bones could be heard snapping. Ollie regained her footing and left my side to aide him. Lesley’s eyes moved to me and he stopped his backward motion.
“This isn’t me.” He said as he raised a finger to point at me. “This is your doing.”
“I’ve done nothing!” I screamed back.
“Do you not see what you are?” He smiled sickly. “Even I didn’t see all that you would become.” His eyes were no longer on mine but his focus was.
“Oh, Ander.” Cora choked looking at me with horror in her eyes. She threw a hand over her mouth covering a gasp.
“What is this?” Ollie breathed causing me to turn to her.
Her pink eyes quivered, bouncing over me. Her soft skin glowing in something reflected before her. Her glittering snuffed by cracking twisted tendrils of red. Tendrils that were pouring…from me.
“No.” I lifted my hands in front of me. My violets were drowning in shocking shades of crimson.
“Oh yes dear boy.” Lesley laughed. “It would seem I wasn’t the monster most feared.” He looked baffled with himself. “I wasn’t wrong. They should have ended you at birth.” He looked to Phyllup. “You see? My hate was not misguided.”
Phyllup’s eyebrows furrowed and her heart visibly broke for her brother. A fractured sob broke from her chest and her mouth opened.
“Hate is always such.” Her words came out like a foreign whisper startling him.
His head shot back as if she had struck him. He narrowed his eyes at her lips aghast that they had formed words. His mouth gaped like a fish and his shock morphed into anger. Anger bleeding into rage.
“My hate will have saved me and you will have envied me for it!” He surged toward the discarded knife on the table.
“NO!” Cora screamed tearing herself from Samwell to grab it first.
Lesley lashed out with another surge of green sending Cora flying into a pillar, crumbling the marble. Before thought reached my brain my hands shot out sending a crackling wave from my fingers. A blast hit Lesley in the chest sending him sprawling on his back.
His breath left him in a hard exhale. I took less than a moment to recover from what I had done and moved around the table to hit him again. He recovered quicker than I would have expected and hit me with his own blast. I was thrown into the table and consumed by a feeling of sickness. His aura leaked into my bones turning my stomach.
The green caused disorientation and I felt as though the world tilted beneath me. As I tried to recover I could see him coming back to the table. Blithe had come to my side and clenched my arm grasping for sight.
Her hand shot out and she threw an aquamarine blast in Lesley's direction, missing, still unable to see the world through me. Lesley raised a hand to return her blast and I launched myself forward to protect her, catching the second blast I hadn’t seen her shift to throw.
My nausea was amplified by a feeling of water burning through my lungs and I croaked on a soggy breath. Phyllup screeched and slammed her open palms together in front of her causing a wave of percussion to warble through the air crashing into her traitorous brother.
He was knocked off balance for only a moment and then he caught her with another blast of green. In rapid succession the three traded blows. I recovered from the drowning feeling and began to stand unnoticed.
Without really reaching for it, I felt the knife that had slain Samwell in my hand. Before my wrist moved outward, I could see the blade lodging harshly in Lesley’s throat. Before I could contemplate doing anything other, I killed him.
Like the crimson that had overtaken the city outside, silence bloomed. Heaved breaths braided in and out of each other in the great hall. All eyes slowly turned to me and I felt the burden of everything that would come after.
Quickly passing moments do not leave much time for controlled thought. The substance of our conscience changes irrevocably when we’ve taken a life. The second that blood has stained our hands; we are…consumed.
Everything we were, everything we have done, pales in comparison to everything that comes in the after. Justifications aside, we are never whole again. Denial becomes a friend and compartmentalization becomes companion. We become full of the empty.
Everything inside of me was crippled by what I did. Everything that had ever been inside of me gone. The willows that once danced inside my soul withered. The man that I had always hoped to become, died.
All that remained.
Were ashes.
- Writer
