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His kingdom rots. But is it not right that its once-verdant fields should turn fallow, its houses stand cold and empty? Although memories of green remain, he knows the earth beneath to be blackened, for the only rain that falls these days is thick and foul. And is it not just that the poison of Lucrece be turned outwards and reflected in its landscape? His kingdom rots, and he is glad of it.
In Archon’s Roost he has borne witness now to eons of decay. How long it’s truly been doesn’t matter; whether it’s been hours, days, centuries, he can no longer recall. From the moment he laid Brion to rest at Hasshe’s grave, time has been as one to him. Hatred, the blood of the land, is eternal, and so he is eternal too. It’s only through Lucrece’s degradation that the passage of time is marked by him at all.
Unsleeping, unbreathing, unbeating—as the Lord of Dark he is but a monument, a king cast from stone. And yet the fiends who wander Lucrece’s corpse in their everlasting hunt seem glad of his presence. They are senseless, voiceless things, driven only by their many hungers, and yet they flock to him whenever he wanders down from Archon’s Roost.
He leaves the Roost only when he finds himself growing tired. And he does grow tired, despite his best efforts. In moments of weakness, he ponders the purpose of the role he now plays. What has this kingdom of his built? How much suffering has he seen, and why? Has it made him any happier?
But exhaustion must not be allowed. He must survey his kingdom, remind himself of what he despises. In doing so his wounds reopen. There lies Lucrece Castle, seat of betrayers. There lies the Forbidden Woods, where he had been set upon by those who’d sent him to the devil’s den in cowardice. There lies Fugalia Village, where he was turned out of doors by those who had once hailed him as their hero.
By the time he’s finished, he is all but bleeding from the bitter grief of it, and that is when the fiends draw near.
He stands alone on what had once been the road between Lucrece Castle and Fugalia. Amid the shadows of the forest he spots a creature taller than him by at least three heads, its massive shoulders draped in matted fur. It peers at him from between the trees and he meets its gaze, unflinching. As the creature draws near, it does so almost tentatively, as though afraid of breaking some unspoken compact between them. But he remains still, allowing it to approach, for he will never turn his back on those like him.
Further down the road there stands a winged beast with tremendous horns. Beside it, a wolf with a snake’s tail. On river’s edge, a three-headed griffin. They and others spot him and draw closer. As they do so, the air grows heavy with the stench they carry of blood and iron, mingled with the scent of balmgrass.
Perhaps they see in him a kindred spirit, another like themselves capable only of survival through wretchedness. Perhaps they know it’s he who occupies the Archon’s Throne and wish to pay their respects to their master.
Whatever driving them, it doesn’t matter.
“My subjects,” he says. “Do you love me?”
He reaches out one arm, an invitation, and the cluster of fiends reach out to him in turn, brushing their hands, furred and scaled alike, against him.
“Do you believe in me?” he asks.
They cannot answer him in words, but they touch his hair, his cloak, closing in more tightly around him. Murmurs ripple through the crowd and the fiends draw even closer, so tight now he can barely move.
He hears the tearing of fabric as one’s claws scrape against his skin, feels the sting and welling of blood that follows. Fingers close around his wrists and ankles as if to bruise. Strands of hair are torn from his head. The sounds they make are not mere murmurs now; they are hungry.
He is not afraid. Just as it is right that Lucrece should rot, it is right that he should be theirs as much as they are his. All of them are joined, bound by that common thread of hate, and though he may have claimed the Archon’s Throne, he will not hold himself above his kin.
If such things are capable of love, this is surely how it manifests—in pain and surrender, in tearing and reshaping, in being broken into pieces and remade.
That is love. That is faith.
Had he known that all along, perhaps things would have ended differently.
The fiends are reverent in their devouring. Their teeth sink cleanly into his flesh and his bones snap as neatly as magicked wood. Even when they’ve had their fill and start to disperse, the monstrous hands which brush against him in parting are very nearly gentle.
But disperse they still do, and he is once again alone.
He is Odio, the Lord of Dark, and he is eternal. Even devouring cannot fell him. Through magic he is restored, for this land is his dominion, and he its master. Through touring his memories, his will has been renewed. He remembers, now, what it was that he despised and why, and he remembers, now, his purpose: to serve as teacher for those foolish enough to aspire still to heroism in a world so little worth saving. There are always those who must be made to learn, and so long as he remembers hate, he knows that he can teach them well.
He returns to Archon’s Roost, where he once again becomes as stone. But he remembers the shape of the land, the silhouettes of its people. And though he once again may be alone, he remembers well the feeling of him breaking under their hands, as if by his surrender beseeching them, believe in me, and they through their devouring answering, we will.