godslayer
-irishais-
i.
Evenings spent in the company of fading lamplight, writing letter after letter, ink smearing as his sleeve drags across the page. Distractedly, he shoves it up around his elbow, the fabric tight and bunching--it doesn't fit, but it was two gil and he doesn't care. His pen dies mid-word; violently, he shakes it, pleading for the ink to renew itself, and it lets loose a splatter of black, all over everything, all over the page. There isn't time to crumple it and start over. He writes over the smears, through the smears, scratching words out and replacing them over and over again. There isn't much time left.
The clock strikes hard, tolling out the hour with the sound of a thunderclap. It echoes. He writes faster, frantically.
I'm sorry, he writes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--
I'msorrysorrysorrysorr-
And she enters so quietly that he thinks that she is a ghost, her nails holding his shoulder fast, pinching through the ill-fitting shirt, through the skin, through bone--
"Kome," she says.
And the chair clatters backwards, cracking against the solid wooden floor as he stands.
ii.
He wakes, and there is sweat beaded on his brow, the breeze that forces itself through inches of open window sticky hot, heavy. Summer is not forgiving here. He sits, his feet planted solidly on the thin gray carpet, and stretches, feeling the last vestiges of the dream work itself out of his muscles as he stretches. The alarm clock begins its persistent chime, and he shuts it off.
The water from the shower head beats full-blast onto his skull, falling down the sides of his face, drumming against his shoulder and falling in rivulets down the contours of his arms, flesh-formed rivers of bone and sinew. He fumbles behind him, blind with the water running off of his hair and into his eyes, and shuts the shower off.
The silence is absolute, and broken as he draws back the plain white curtain. The fabric rustles, the rings creak along their pole, and he steps out of the narrow stall.
He knots a towel around his waist, and lathers shaving cream along his jaw as he waits for the fog to clear from the mirror. It takes an--
iii.
eternity, she tells him, her voice seductive with promise, with temptation. Rarely have the two ever gone hand in hand. Forever, she whispers, forever.
He who wants immortality, he who wants fame and glory. He who wants, wants, wants.
Don't be afraid. It will be yours--
iv.
"Some day," he tells a sullen boy, "I'm gonna tell you about my romantic dream."
The leather of a great gray coat whirls around his legs as he turns away. He catches the gleam of shined metal by his side and revels in it, in the way it catches the light. Hours spent in his room, seated in the rickety desk chair that Garden has provided them with, a bottle of oil open at his side, feather-light cloth gliding against the sharp edge. He wears the scars on his thumbs with pride, each bubbling of blood that comes to the surface when his hand slips a badge of honor. He has named it after a god, and the weapon is pristine, pure, powerful.
He wields it with all the grace of a--
v.
boy, she muses, her face shadowed as he readies Hyperion at his side. Boy, or man?
I am not a boy.
She laughs, and the sound is metal against cold stone, the sound ground to the sharpest edge. And out of the corners of his eyes, dazzling in their brilliance, he can see the sparks fly up from the grindstone.
Come, she says, and holds out her clawed hand to him.
vi.
He walks hand in hand with a girl along cobblestoned streets, and can faintly smell ammonia still drifting off her hair. Ammonia and flowers--lavender?
He's never been any good at identifying flowers.
She plays with the bleached-blonde strands anxiously. "Do you like it?" she asks.
He squeezes her hand. "Rebel," he tells her, and she laughs.
Seifer, do you like it?
Do you?
vii.
"I give as good as I get," he tells a stern-faced panel of SeeDs, with their thick dossiers open in front of them. He can barely see with the thick bandage across his face, but he leans back in the chair anyway, hands laced behind his head. A breeze filters in through centimeters of open window, and it raises goosebumps along his arms.
He smirks at the panel in front of them, and answers honestly when they demand to know if it is true that he struck first.
"Yes," he says. He sees Instructor Trepe's bowed blonde head at the end of the row; she doesn't look at him as she writes down the answer.
They slap him with another infraction, and put him in solitary for six hours, with cold steel handcuffs around his wrists.
"You're pushing it," Trepe tells him, and he sneers. Her boots echo as she walks away.
viii.
He'll never remember what it was that he told them as he turned away. There will be another time for better last words, because this is only the beginning.
Bid farewell to your childhood.
He was never a child.
He enters the portal before her--he can't walk through walls, he's not supposed to walk through walls--and the vortex falls about his shoulders like a curtain of hot, hot water.
He opens his mouth to scream--
ix.
The chair tumbles back, splintering against the floor.
Wind kicks up from every angle, roaring across the desk. The lamp falls, shattering into a hundred-thousand-million pieces.
His letters go flying.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorrysorrysorry
"Seifer," the ghost-creature says, stepping forward. It is not silent now, her shoes are steel against the floor.
"Do not be frightened."
x.
"Seifer," a girl says, her voice gentle, feather soft in his ear. "Seifer, wake up."
He catches a glimpse of brown hair floating just out of the corner of his eye, and he whirls, searching, desperate, his heart leaping into his throat with every frantic thud--
xi.
Seifer opens his eyes to a grey quarry, cold raindrops falling hard against his cheeks.
"Who's there?" he demands. His voice reverberates through the stone and comes back hollow to his ears.