|Why is it that birds fly?
To soar the spotless skies mottled by heavenly clouds and sea-kissed winds, to see their reflection in the rolling waves and look down on the creatures so unimportant, so caged, for they aren’t truly free?
Yet the ever naive sparrow that endlessly roams the great blue above, knows nothing of what it is to toil and tear through the dirt and grime below, caked in blood, mud and ash in search of one unholy desire across Desolation’s blackened husk.
To Velvet Crowe, why birds fly is irrelevant, only that they are innocent and blind to the hounding predators that would eagerly gore the unfortunate to satiate a thirst, a hunger. A hunger she so eagerly feeds, the kindling of a reckoning. So, when these exorcists return to their iron nests sightlessly built in the den of red-eyed wolves, she would make sure to be there waiting for them. Because it was what that man deserved.
A Shepherd herding a flock to the slaughter.
“Never fall to the fragility of emotion. A quality all should uphold when stemming the daemon tide. Heed reason, not instinct, for our mind is what separates us from beasts”. But when we are deprived of our ability to feel, what is it that makes us human?
Such thoughts would ring in his ears every waking moment that passed since that night, an endless tinnitus of torrential rain. It was what strayed his blade from aiming true, for his resolve to be tested; to purge what threatens humanity. In the depths of his own pathetic helplessness, Lucius Asteria knew only one thing.
Fire adheres to no master. Not reason, nor emotion.
It simply burns. And will, is endless fuel for such an inferno to rage. A sentiment shared by another. Let it burn within you, until it can burn without.
No more reason, and let emotion be the spark.
For when you leave the gilded cage, and see how the forest around was always ablaze, relish in your newfound freedom—until you are what burns in the end.|
