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Chizome traces the names of the paper labels — they are faded over time, each a testament to a world of pain left behind and the clear way to a world where heroes are more than what they are.
Heroes.
The word fills him with a loathing, a longing, a larkspur poison— all parts of it are antithetical to him, just like the blue flowers growing on the hillsides. Plants, animals, people— they grow alongside the larkspur, never knowing that it holds them hostage to their inevitable deaths.
Larkspur speaks as if from far away, in the voices of the dead: await, I await.
Separate from him only by glass, his own larkspur garden calls to him. Here, there is all the proof of his conquest, the shuddering gales of change he sends gusting through the world that has mocked him, betrayed him, abandoned him.
Once, in the long distant past, when the dead did not call for revenge and mumble, mouthless beneath soil— once, Chizome had wanted peace. Now, he traces the letter of the labels and he desires only to expand, to take— if this is the only part of heroics he is allowed, then he will take everything he can from them.
Behind the glass barriers, each jar a well curated building block to his career— Chizome stares lovingly into the eyes of the first man he ever killed and laughs to think that a man who sees far in the distance cannot see through formaldehyde.
And the jar in his hands— it is heavy, unwieldy and far more cumbersome than anything he has before.
It had taken so much effort, to dig down through skin, to pry his knife through the connection of a natural engine— it was wound into his bones, the veins connected like pipelines. And like pipelines, they burst in furious anger— blood is the fuel by which an engine runs.
Like the hero world runs on hypocrisy, on bribery and the endless search for glory— and he will tear it out by the root, cull all that do not align with the true goal of the world. Chizome hefts the jar onto the shelf and stares, in a twisted desire to understand and to know —
The arm engine port of Ingenium floats in a sea of toxic clarity and Chizome craves to taste his victory once more. A glance around the room, lined with endless glass jars tells him but one thing—
To the victor go the spoils.