Lion Head Mesa a final inundation

He's seen death a million times.

For each time, it's been Rashespses behind him. They've fallen together in laughter and a million drinks as brothers do, and did. In recent times, however, he has changed. Does Rashepses know this?

It's within these confines of chattering walls that he recognizes something truly horrifying. That they were not the same as they'd once been, but maybe neither was he. That love grows and changes, and moves on. That beneath the crying ground they stood on was the echoing song of growth; though, what Mesen-ka knew now was that brothers did not lose bond.

A guard's duty is to his king. A brother for a brother.

But Rashepses loses him in that moment.

The rocks are crumbling. The river screams afar, and only the flash of his children are behind the whites of his eyes. The only lights in this dead life. "KIDS!"

"KIDS!" Running for them, the helpless that had been summoned into this life in the cold mud. His babies, the only focus that should have ever been present in his breaking mind. "KIDS!" His voice cracks, desperate, raw. The word is swallowed by the groaning of the earth and the shrieking of stone grinding against stone. "KIDS!" He braces himself against the collapsing walls. They are lost in the crowd. The world is falling. Mesen-ka knew where the holy duty lies, knew that the gods bore their mighty hands upon them for their treason now, and even his own. Their father would die a sinner if it meant a last goodbye.

They are there, just beyond the flood of masses and weeps. "Taliba! Ibrahim!" They are there between the billowing fog, together. They are there, if only a little far away, they are that much closer. "Aiman!" Mesen-ka's heart treads the miles. May their gods speak one last mercy upon the children, the innocent, those born into this sacred life who had not yet learned what it was like to feel heartbreak, the first kiss of a lover, the foolishness of a first dance, the laughter of their first ceremony.

He has brought the most glorious thing he has ever seen in this life when he looks into his children's eyes each day, and imagines the people they will become, and who they are.

The world can not have them now, no, not yet.

"I'm here," he calls for them. "I'm here!" Don't be scared, he wishes to tell them. Don't be scared. He doesn't know if his arms have made it around them. He doesn't know if they will remember him as a father who tried. "I'm here." As black covers his vision, he doesn't know if he's made it over top of them to shield them from all that this blasted palace is before his breath collapses, and rocks bring him down to the earth.
Together.

He prays Zharille has found happiness somewhere.