DIVINE WRATH

Follow Me

It followed like this. The second hymn:

Love of the gods is a fickle matter

A feeble gust of violent winds

Turns and swirls and kills

But it leaves you

Their eternity does not expand to their love.

But for her I will bend rules set in ancient stones

My heart burns for her

My blood is molten pain

It guts me to know that from now on I will be forever doomed

Into compliance to her ever whims.

Her nature will be my unbinding.

I told you, I did not need to have the Poetics book at me. Those verses had been printed on to my pupils. They had seared through tissues and membranes, slipping into my veracious nightmares.

I stood on the ledge. My flesh hurt. I dragged one of my legs to my chest. The long slim cut from my ankle to my tight had been covered in leaves. I tighten those improvised pastures with strips of cloth.

Una found herself a place near me.

"You should have come to me. You shouldn't have waited so much."

I did not answer her right away. I watched the zebras departing in the orange sky. The plan was in motion. Thass and Lila were already on it. If it will work, everything will end soon, I will have my family back.

"I am not your Empress. I am no longer your Empress."

She said nothing. I knew that she will not take anything that I would say seriously. She was chastising me for not having come quicker to her with my problem not because she cared for me. Or, her attention was not in the way that a mortal would understand it, at least. She was bound into loyalty. She wanted me to have told her about my Maro problem so she could go to her Emperor and tell him. He would have given her the "right" commands and she would have known what to do.

Now, she felt as if I cornered her into making blind decisions. She felt like I was in her charge, but her entire balance had been disrupted when the Emperor was exiled.

I could not blame her, not that much and I could not push her away, either. She would just hurt herself trying to reach me, no matter what. I cupped my head. My fingers knotting around strand of air. I closed my eyes.

This feeling of narrowness was not new. The familiar taste of suffocation engulfed me. I was walking down the streets. I was in the old Sky Citadel. The one in which the streets were paved, the buildings were standing high and mighty.

"The Emperor had returned."

Lila whispered into my year. She was wearing a vale. The weather was ever so warm. She stopped to my side. I was plucking rose petals into my basket.

I nodded to her. The streets had been in preparation for his return for at least two mortal days. Those days it was not often that he would leave the Godly capital, but when he did the weather took it into a true frenzy. The plants acted weird and the sprites went mad with wine and sex. Now, he returned, order will be ensured.

I pushed my basket into the arms of one in attending ladies. I hopped on a Pegasus and rode fast to the palace. I wanted to arrive before him. I would have had time to prepare for whatever mood he would have been in.

But, we meet hallway through the one thousand stairs. I was just starting my climb when he and his court were already at the top. He turned, clad in white and gold.

Th wind began to blow forcefully. I had heard screams. Thunders teeming in the sky. The fine rain began to pour in the distance, fighting back the fires that burned from the weaves of heat. His eyes were stuck to the horizon. He stepped down. I forced myself to put one step ahead of another and to climb the stairs to him.

"You are not happy to see me?"

He reached with his wide palm to cup my arm. I flinched away. His eyebrows knitted into a deep V.

"Why would I be? I am your prisoner!"

I had felt how the swirls of hard wind were raising under my palms. I had known even then that if I were to look I would have seen small tornado like swirls growing under my tight fists.

"A prisoner to your powers, I bet."

He reached for my wrist. This time he caught it. His grip was forceful. He pulled me up, beside him, so close to him that I was splattered to his chest plate.

"You missed me. I missed you, too, love."

He had patted my hair down to my burned tips. He had kissed my furrowed brow. His caress brought the fine hairs on my nape at a standstill.

I raised my head between my hands. I swallowed. My eyes were burning. I would have liked to cry. To walk the forest barefooted and to cry my heart out. I would have like to weep near a willow. That would have been entirely appropriate.

But, instead, I had to confront the reality.

I dragged my throat.

"Would you like to accompany me to your Emperor?"

Una did not look overtly surprised, but she still looked taken aback.

"Why?"

"I have some unfinished businesses with him. And as you promised to guard me at any time..."

That was the role that she had assigned herself in the plan that we had discussed. We were just us two left behind. The rest of the "team"-the newly formed one- where out and about to solve MY problem.

"Wouldn't it look suspicious if a member of the Division was to travel by herself?"

We were still working undercover. It was of highly importance that both Division would keep their appearances while executing the plan. Max had left, too. Meaning that Una was the only one left to patrol the sector, that of her and Max's Division. The SS Division had left behind that insufferable creature that went by the name of Mere.

"Suit yourself."

She wanted to avoid any kind of confrontation with him. If I were to bring her too to him, he would know that she did not do her job properly, that she got sloppy. I wouldn't have gained any favorable points if I were to drag her through, mud, anyways.

//11.09.2020; 12.49//