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CHAPTER FOURTEEN / VOL. I, NOTREACLE / BURYING THE DOG
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THE LOST ART OF MURDER. That's what Ares says—that the intricacies of murder have been lost on mankind. He thinks that death is beautiful, that the battlefield is his canvas and that blood is his medium. He reckons himself a Monet; Will reckons him a five-year old with finger paints. There's nothing beautiful about the way he kills, just blood and flesh torn from the body. There's no dignity in it, just torment.
Beautiful death is a fallacy; any beauty in death is a lovely lie meant to ease the transition. The truth is that death is ugly. No amount of treacle or metaphors could make it something to be admired. You could paint a corpse like the Birth of Venus, but you'd still smell the rot.
Murder is a means to an end. When Will kills, she doesn't think anything of it. Maybe it's worse that she doesn't feel remorse, but at least she isn't making it into something it's not.
There are worse things to be than a monster.
Monsters don't hide behind a mask, justifying their actions through flowery allegories.
All that the gods have are masks. They find new ways to make themselves into someone else, shape themselves into something better than what they are. They are the meek, the unkind, the yellow-bellied children parading as the divine. Gods and monsters are not the same.
A god learns to save face, hiding behind a veil to cloak their perversion. But a monster knows what it is.
There's no point in trying to disguise herself. She won't shy away from the sharp edges and beady eyes; there's only one form that she truly exists in. Some people fool themselves into seeing something that isn't there. They lie to themselves and create an image of Will that looks nothing like the creature lurking beneath the surface. But Leo has seen her for what she is.
A monster through and through.
And now he's turned the dark mirror on himself. He can't come back from that.
