#chazure

Lungs may reach for air, but sometimes they do not get it. My emotions have betrayed me, and tears moisten my jagged cheeks. I could not keep the hard complexion Chazure held so well. Pain in the calices of my feet was an after thought to the throb in my heart. Childhoods wasted, lessons forgotten, banished from what I was taught to be all my life, for reasons not even I can comprehend, these things happen. And now I must run from the very brother I loved and protected, with all my soul. I run with the compassion that my mother instills in me with the hope of a safe place to be. But doubt over rules hope and my muscles tire and my mind grows weak, and one conundrum in stuck in the center of my consciousness; why?

“Chazure!” A strong voice indeed. Well earned and well backed, my king runs to his queen with ease. He reaches down to her with a small box between his jaws. Ever so gently he places this in her grasp.

“thank you, my love.”

“my queen. Why have I run far and for this quaint stone box?”

“it was mother’s. she handed it down to me. And for the circumstance that I have no daughter to inherit this, it shall find a place in my heart, until my time comes.”

Death? You talk of death?! My mind spins, I might be growing faint because of your insensitivity. Kunith, who is the only one that can talk of death! For it is the only one who has experienced, death! This point I may not dare bring to your attention, it shall stay locked away in silence, for eternity.

“Daro come to the Liian. With us. Your kingdom is lost with or without you. Please, leave with us.”

“Spoken like a true queen. But I cannot so soon. I need to tie loose ends. I cannot, and will not, leave until I have my questions answered.”

Distain colored her face. Washing away the smile, hushing her joy to see him. She reaches up for his ear and whispers a love note. Knowing that it just might be their last.

I stand as a chill runs down my spine. Chazure’s position by her king is locked. They stand, heads ever so close, frozen in time. A new serge of adrenaline, races through my veins. Unending marquis of questions engulf my mind. What was this? Am I growing faint? I’m scared. I want to stand by my mother, but my feet will not obey. My ankles strain as my muscles pull at their tendons, but my feet are bound with transparent chains of defiance. I cannot move.

My eyes shoot up and down the dark underground hall. The ceiling shakes, dirt is knocked loose, roots shudder. We need to run. And never stop. I look to my mother for a warm smile, or even just to meet her eyes. But they are closed, and her head is still, locked like stone parallel to daro’s sharp eyes. I feel my every hair rise from a resting state, to a state of terror.

Chazure’s azure fur seems to rise as well, but pieces break off like bits of sand or dust. The white of her wings wafts like smoke from a burning heart, and seeps through the ceiling. The air is filled with tinny shinning stars of color as she crumbs like a statue in a church. Like she was nothing. And I watch her slip away.

Daro crumbles next to his queen. But he erodes to the ground and pools up like smog of a thousand dead mens breath on the floor. White and black it seeps and slithers. Closer and thicker. The ends of the tunnel are a winter black, they seem to draw closer and nearer to this scene.

Chazure’s jewelry shatters before it has the chance to fall off her degrading shoulders. I wince as shrapnel cuts my cheeks. Tears are unable to pour from my eyes, so I cry blood from the cuts on my face. The slow thick bog envelopes my ankles, and the stone floor is hidden from sight. A small erratic vibration in the walls becomes more evident. Stones start to fall out of their dirt tombs and tumble to my feet.

My neck burns from trying to keep up with my erratic movements. My eyes scavenge everywhere for anything. But all I find are the cracks coming down the walls, and my beloved parents fading before my eyes. Eroding away, and dieing, in front of me. I was the audience, and they were the tragedy.

Daro’s bog pushed and slithers against my chest, like a thousand snakes. Layers and layers of color swirl and mix as they melt off him, to drown me. To choke me by slinking down my throat, and blocking the air I ever so needed. I strain my neck, one more minute, a few more seconds, just so I can think of the times obsidian and I shared. The moments where I was the mentor, protector, loving brother, and where he would listen, where he would hide, and where he would sit broken, ashamed, and unwanted. My words would raise him up, above the cloud line, above the stars, and he would then see, that the three rhelms, intertwined and connected, one soul at a time. I did not know of the monster inside him that would grow. And eat away all that I had tried so hard to teach him.

So take my now smoke. Show me the gods of death! Show me what its like to feel my blood run cold! But know! That my every breath! And every beat of my living heart! Was for obby! And when I die. A fracture of him will die too! The mentor! The listener! The brother! Is what you will be killing. So take me now. Let my blood run cold.

A dark black sliver of light cracked out from the bog, and added to the darkness around me. The floor shook, the dark light gained more openings. And I felt the floor give way to my weight.

And I fell. Through nothing, through an abyss of black orange light.

Heavy, wet air ran past my ears. And a voice, running clearly over all the wind. Roared and laughed, as I tumbled forever more. Menacing and cold it spoke, “you ignorant fool! Your dreams are my domain!”