Blackwater Islands shadowkiss

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.