Chapter Text
HALOS are very sharp. One long infinity edge.
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Originally the HALO floats above the head, shining and bright and a perfect circle and edge. It can be telekinetically controlled to slice enemies.
Then it tarnishes like silver, it gets less bright, and hovers closer and closer to the head until it rests on the head.
Then it warps, bends if you will, gets darker as nicks appear in the blade.
To be used as a weapon, the Bent HALO is grasped in the hand. Because it doesn't have a hand grip, not even a place where it is slightly dull, it cuts the wielder. As it is used, it bends more and more.
Until it breaks in two, and the pieces come and rest on the brow, now black but still gleaming.
The new HORNS go into the skin and fuse with the skull and make terrible horns. Ram, antelope, elk, something like that.
The HORNS are made of the stuff of the HALO, and return to the brow.
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This is one of the paths that a Hero takes, the choices.
One is to not abandon your morals in the face of the amoral enemy.
This one is to always fight to win. Whatever the cost is to yourself, to the enemy, if those you love are alive and have a chance of being happy at the end of it, then it is right.
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There are two hero stories, three if you think, four if you’re really paying attention.
The first is to never abandon your morals in the face of an amoral enemy.
The second is to always win against your foe, to do whatever it takes.
The third is a variation on the second, and the one in this poem. To fight until you become what you fight. “But was it worth it?” they will ask, this one answers "Yes! Because mine are alive and happy."
The fourth is a variation of the first. To cling to your righteousness until your clinging tarnishes the purity of your ideals. Until the blood that you did not save--because you did not get your hands dirty and do the right thing--makes you not what you are against but something equally as bad. Not the Monster you have fought, but a monster all the same.
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I use the imagery of the rock and the ocean ["the Rock flings itself upon the Waves"] as well as the almost awkward phrasing of bashing ["And Bash your ENEMY upon that SHAPE that was above your Head"] to communicate that the HALO is a single, fixed point and all the world spins around it. Like fixing a camera for a night in the country to capture the stars, and it seems as if all the universe circles around that one point. Not in actuality, there is a true Center which everything circles, but in that one thing's reality it is a fixed point. So, the imagery I wanted to convey is that of--even though the HERO is hitting his ENEMY with his HALO in his fist moving all around the HALO is not moving, the world is moving around it.
The ocean metaphor is in the same vein, but slightly off. I wanted to convey my established message while usurping a time old adage. While a Rock cannot move its existence presents an obstacle, the HERO does not choose to fight the ENEMY, like the ocean who is pulled by the moon, it is the HERO's duty to destroy the ENEMY.