she sought
@Pelagius next. the prophet wasted no time.
it is time for me to depart. i have unfinished business to attend.
to him, she offered the same choice:
leave with me. or stay.
or go your own way; his path would always be lit with power, wherever it led.
The slugs were gone, but that was fine. Mother was his priority.
She came to him, he stared at her, and he learned of her business. Around him, his cacophony buzzed and hissed. Under his paw, the mouse he had been toying with made its escape.
He stood.
I follow you as always, mother.
The buzzing choir agreed.
her son. the listener swelled with fierce pride.
i am very displeased with your father. he has become... quite blind in his middle age,
perhaps you and i will enlighten him, hm?
her voice was fond, her gaze warm upon her son. we will be in the neighborhood, after all.
do you know the taste of death?
her son; certainly he did, or would soon, for it was the wispmother's tainted blood in his veins, and the listener's darkness at the heart of him. he was made for death. made for divinity. made for perfection.
Mother told him of father, of his wayward ways, and Pelagius’s mouth curved into a cruel grin.
The beetles hummed in his voice when he opened his mouth.
We have tasted it in corpses and in the living.
The cacophony rose into a choir, a thousand howling voices all laughing in synchronicity. A thunderstorm of buzzing.
It was the most magnificent music he’d ever heard.
We ache to taste it again.
Digging his clawed fingertips into the hearts of men, extracting their life, their death, the very song by which they lived.
And watching the life drain from them as he devoured them whole.
The conductor of his beetle symphony, he who knew the music of life, Pelagius’s smile stretched even wider.
Perhaps we will taste it sooner than later.