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They weren’t trying to kill each other when they fought in the mountains. The spells they used were designed to disable, not to destroy. Why, all these years later, they still weren’t trying to kill each other… that was never spoken.
Mannimarco’s not sure what happened. Perhaps he just got too angry and used the wrong spell. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember. But next thing he knew Vanus, Vanus was lying dead at his feet, and the world was frozen
And he shouldn’t have done it
Shouldn’t have done it
Didn’t know what else to do
He couldn’t understand, couldn’t accept that he was dead, somehow thought that if he could just make the body move again then the mind would return too. But as the thing that isn’t Vanus turned its sightless eyes on him he knew it was a mistake.
He brought it with him to his lair and locked it in a dark room, and there it sat.
Every day Mannimarco goes into that room and looks on the thing that isn’t Vanus, hoping against hope that when he pushes open the stone door, it will turn around at the sound and laugh, tell him that he’s such a weirdo for dressing that way and living in a cave and let’s get out of here and go home and everything will be the way it was before all of this happened.
But of course that doesn’t happen. No matter how Mannimarco screams at it, no matter how many kisses he puts on its cold flesh like offerings at an altar, it isn’t Vanus, and it never will be again.
The thing sits in darkness day in and day out and Mannimarco knows he should destroy it, that he should end it, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He won’t kill him again. He can’t…