What is a king to the dead?
I am a stone against the tide of time. More a mountain when mortals stood low and sparse, nothing but the sand shifting at my feet. I remember them as the fish crawling to land, his thoughts no more than a word without syllable, without form.
When did this change?
When did my kingdom become theirs?
I am weakened now. Funneled into their skin. My power stripped by them. My true form is a hurricane contained within porcelain. My thoughts are only one current in midst of thousands, coursing through one conduit in a pile of brain matter. She is still there, the tide to my peak. She is dead, her organs a rot pooled in my gut and her spirit pulled apart and scattered on the wind. Her body was given as mediocre sacrifice to the immaculate being I was. She is nothing. A still sea cannot crumble the mountain.
The water is not still.
The tide comes and the stone wears. I am not rubble but smoothed boulder to a petulant rains. Never destroyed, however chaos claws into these bones and over this skin, a child of stagnation.
Entropy plagues me.
I change my form. I become her.
I smile at a reflection that is not mine. I test the way the hardened muscle pulls her lips up and my stomach retches.
Wesley was right.
It's disgusting. A falsehood unbound by curiosity.
Her eyes are the color of deep earth, where many wish I would return. Her frame is thin, a frail thing unable to house my glory. I tilt my head but not as myself; I do so softer, a lulling nod to the side. Her hair sways, quiet and uneven waves hanging.
"Well, look at you," she says but I am speaking. It's her voice but my throat allows them to claw free. Her voice is sap on a tree, sweet and sticking to my thoughts. There is no sign of the violence I feel in spasms, the memory of her death a bolt of lightning splitting me again.
The glass cracks but does not penetrate the skin of my shell. It does not tarnish my armor. Shards fall like rain, hitting the floor and scattering. There's drywall on my fist and a small hole in the wall.
Guilt plagues me. Gods do not repent. Kings do not fall to their knees. They do not apologize for existing.
"Illyria," his voice carries the weight of burden and a throat requiring no sustenance reminds me of its existence when it closes. Another current of memory. A soft, meager mortal speaks in careful precision, easing a petulant mongrel, a rabid girl who dreams in formulaic absurdities. Dreamed.
I turn to him, my form sufficient. Blue, they call me, the laughter in their mocking tones grating. I remind myself I could unravel them skin first and adorn my walls with their bones, however little it means. I watch the disheveled husk of Wesley Wyndam Pryce scowl and the jolt of electricity crawls from the rotted meat and I stand straighter. A feeling without word or form fills my skull and, for the space of an unintelligible moment, I am trapped in the horror of my own reckoning.
Fred's pain washes over in total cataclysm to everything I have ever known. She is known to me as I was once known to this realm. Not a mountain, but the sky. Everywhere, moving in its stagnation. A void, both apatheia and corrupter. Without soul or body, but a shadow so great I regret to notice when day breaks.
These eyes do not look away, intent and unblinking. My rage could once reshape reality to my liking, a storm I willed without words. It limps now, staggering against an amalgam of thoughts and emotions which do not belong to me. I break before he does and I hate them both for the slight.
When I turn and walk away, something in my step softens when I hear him pick up slices of broken mirror one by one. He is a careful creature, sure in his anger but thoughtful in its execution. Even when it overflows, he guides it with a level of calculation I nearly find intriguing.
When I get to the roof, I clutch this stomach and demand a reprieve. It doesn't matter. Winifred Burkle can no more grant a respite than I can grant her peace. She does not exist and yet she is surrounding me. Even the air is smothering.
I wonder if my mountain truly will become dust. I cannot abide this treason but I cannot stop it. I will one day scatter on the sea and submit to time. The shadows of the deepest oceans will come to swallow us all and my hell will be oblivion when once oblivion was the only hell I knew.
Once a god, I'm a shadow of a shadow. I am lesser. I will not apologize for existing and yet I prepare for destruction. I will rage against their enemies as I would my own. I will plague their nightmares and this guilt will bear its rotted fruit.
This shell will be a weapon until it crumbles and salts the earth.
I feel the wind and hear the crashing of waves like a whisper.
Entropy plagues me. It is a torrent of chaos beneath the stone of this skin and pressure expands behind her eyes. I cover this face I now own with her hands.
I become the woman I took from this world and allow her a moment, the space of a breath, to weep.
What is a king to the dead?