Sigil

“Who are you?”

A stern face adorned with gold, lips parted and gaze unkind, unfeeling, impenetrable.

“I am,” He began. “Before your time.”

Red hair pooled like blood about his shoulders, pale eyes mooncast and distant as if longing for a land he could not see. Taloned fingertips shone metal with their eerie slowness.

“What are you?”

“A thing,” He replied, a bitterness bubbling in his throat.

“What thing?”

Silence. The man’s gaze grew dark with thought, ugly and restless. Talons came to touch upon the enquirer’s face, pupils thin and breath cold against pallid skin.

“I am a warning.”

His talons cut the cheek they rested on, thin wounds dribbling crimson. Marked. The man’s pale gaze left the other and he began to walk away, slipping into the moon’s blind shadows.

The world had changed since he last roamed it.


- Written by PunchingSolas ♥


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“I would like, if I may, to make you...a promise.”

Said the god, to the wretched. From his flesh bore wounds that bled upon the world, trickles of blood blacker than obsidian and gold finer than any found harboured in the ground. The god smiled, presenting the vulnerabilities of his open body closer to the lips of a creature wounded.

“I give to you,” The god murmured. “My blood, that of a lineage far beyond your mortal understanding.”

The creature drank the imbued ichor and felt its tarrish repulsion settle in the pit of his stomach.

“Where your wounds spring forth, may you find them healed, made immortal by my generosity,” The god’s cold fingertips ghosted over frail cheek, benevolent smile devoid of any real compassion for the pitiful creature. “But may everything you touch turn for your selfishness. For there is no gold in the world that can bring you true happiness.”

The creature did not believe the god. Healed and free from mortal concern he lived as a new man, a greed-addled one, creating his lineage and feasting upon the finest of meals. But the food grew bitter as the years moved on, as his wife aged and he did not, he realised he could not touch his children, could not hold them, and soon all gold in his possession shone with the reflection of a dead-eyed man soulless and doomed to wander eternally.

“You must take this power back.”

The man pleaded with the god, in the dead of night as the winds blew harsh rain upon his body. And the god laughed, offering him a single cherry, one grown in the midst of spring.

“Eat this, and I will take my power back from you.”

The cherry glinted black in the dark glimmer of the moonglow, the man ate it in swift desperation, and felt it harden, solid gold within his throat, he felt it stick, and he began to choke. He noticed his skin ripple, his eyes blinded, body unmoving. He had paid for his selfishness, and no more did the man plead, for he could not, instead catching the rain on his statue corpse. The god cupped cold cheeks into gentle palms, and kissed the statue’s lips, offering the lifeless face a returning smile.

“And once more, my blood, like a plague, spreads.”

- Written by PunchingSolas ♥