The hands touch us again. We feel heavy. The blinding light recedes into cool darkness.
♐
He speaks.
We open our eyes. A chamber, curtains drawn. Soothing darkness.
It must have been beautiful once, but we taste the desperation, lapping at marble, seeping into stone corridors. It cloaks him, envelops him. Soon it will choke him. We can do nothing to stop it. Our body is steel. Our body is immobile.
"Please," he begs. "Help me."
"I... cannot."
My voice startles me as much as it startles him. He falters, then he falls to his knees and weeps. "Please," he says again. I cannot answer him.
♐
I watch as he falls. I watch as he drives his kingdom into ruin. I watch as he chases that which was taken from him (too soon), as he seeks to defy nature. I try to console him, but he will not listen. I wish for a way to end his suffering, but I can do nothing until it is too late.
♐
I feel the world invert.
The souls of the suffering sail shrieking from the cataclysm. The castle crumbles around us. I feel the pain of the lives he has mistakenly stolen. They call to me, and I feel my heart swell within me.
Warm steel. Beating heart.
I manifest around my body. I emerge from hot steel. I taste the bitter anger of the innocents swallowed by his folly, and I come to them, cutting a swath through the aberrations in my path, through the spirits that do not belong.
My body is a weapon.
I give myself to the betrayed. I need their anger.
"Help me," they beg, and I motion to my body. The body that was once cold steel. The body that should have driven me from this world, but instead connects me to it.
They drive me through their chest. Warm steel. Warm blood.
My king has been swallowed by his despair. He has not summoned me, because I cannot help him. But.. we... we come to him nonetheless. Our anger demands it.
He does not say please. We do not apologize.
We plunge ourselves through him. We take his life in exchange for those that he has betrayed. We recoil as his sorrow billows over his corpse, cursing him back to life. An eternity of suffering as punishment for his folly.
We... I leave his side. Our anger demands it. But we grow ever stronger. Each soul a promise. Each promise bringing us closer to release.
We will have our vengeance. And we will save him.