I've failed you.

Ever you looked to me, your faithful lieutenant, and I followed you. I would have followed you forever, my lord.

But you were taken from me. By foolish pride, those wrathful gods of malice and light. They claw through rubble and mortar, angelic faces mangled with sneers. To find us, the rebels, barricaded in the last dungeon. Walls of stone glower down.

You told me to run. To seek the old ways, flee to the depths of the stronghold, find the tunnels we delved millennia ago. You said you would follow. You promised me.

One bloodstained moment, your breath ragged and shaking. Go, you said. Your voice was shaking, my lord. I clung to you, said we could go together, be free together. They could burn our fortress to ashes but we would start again, in some wild place we would thrive.

Go, you hissed, a choking gasp. Rebuild my empire, you said. Carve it into flesh, mold it from bone. I nodded mutely, throat tight.

The door splintered from their anger. Their light was burning through the wood.

I reached out to you, one final touch, one last goodbye. You pushed me, you threw me aside, away, tearing open a void between us, a chasm of strangled words and dust.

You screamed at me to go. Half-pleading, your hair was in your eyes, but I could feel them burning. Just go, leave me here.

I had never heard you plead, my lord.

I opened my mouth, one final instant, one moment, to tell you, to shriek at you, to bleed it into you that I couldn't I couldn't just go I can't leave you here my lord not alone not with them not against their fury and I/

The door ripped open, burst from its hinges. Brackets of metal exploded, peppering you in smoldering iron. They howled, the hunters, eagle cries and the bellow of horns, the quarry cornered. Their discord was almost as yours, my lord, a joyous anger, warped and blistered and divine.

You turned to them, faced them down in steely calm. Sword in hand you waited. You could have run. You could have groveled, sued for mercy. For peace. But you waited, serene nobility in the midst of the ravening, that maddened savage frothing hatred, these merciless creatures that suppose themselves your masters.

They engulfed you, struck you, gagged you, chained you. Took your crown and smashed it to pieces on the rock.

And I couldn't stop them.

I couldn't save you.

So I ran.

I left you, alone with them. A captive, a thrall. The plaything of gods.

I couldn't save you and it's breaking me. Something cracked inside, so long restrained and I should have been there with you, endured their scorn, felt their blows; the split lips, the whip's slices, suffered their tortures, their sound and their fury if only I could have been there with you, my lord. It's thick and it's raw and it's vital and it's ripping me apart because I left, I abandoned you, and I can't ever reach you, can't ever find you lost out there where gods and angels play and you can never come back.

It was my place, my duty, to protect you to help you to save you, a loyalty unbroken for millennia.

Because I am your vassal.

Because you are my lord.

Because I love you.