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“Lord.”
Trembling words peeled at a shaking lower lip, face pursed in a pout, little glints of yellowed teeth poking through a whimpering, parted mouth.
“It’s horrible, really.” He gripped the man’s head like a damn bowling ball, legs folded to his chest on the little step down into the maze, looking off longingly, yearning, his gaze — or, well, absence of such, pointed off to nowhere in general, some crass sort of sigh coming from his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing as he took a swallow.
“Don’t you think?”
He lifted the man’s head with one hand, those keratin encircled fingers grappled to his skull, the limp figure’s gaze shifting fearfully to the man, Asterion’s head turning to meet his, tilting a little, as if in childish disappointment.
“I just don’t get it.” He sighed gruffly, and ear flicking debris away, fat tail periodically slapping against the stone behind the two, resting his chin in his cupped palm.
“I was child. What, 17? 18? Child enough.” His shifted one leg out, stretching it, the rest of the hoof scraping against reddened stone. “It still hurts, lord, it does.”
A beat passed, drumming a thick finger on the man’s head, before turning to him, not quite aware of his fear laced face, frankly, actually, rather clueless to it.
“Have you ever been hunted?” The words peeled from his lips slowly, as an idiot would do to someone who spoke a different language than them, attempting to smell a hint of recognition in the man, but all he did was shake his head, trembling, frantic.
His lips squatted down, wrinkles forming on his chin as he frowned, looking away again.
“Of course you haven’t.” He drummed his finger thrice, before looking back at him, with solemn.
“It was before all of this.” He pointed the picture of it, elaborating by waving his free hand in the air, to nothing in specific, just the maze around them. “Before I died, I mean. Before everything died. I’m not sure you’d remember that. You might be too young.”
He looked at the man, expecting a response, a clarification, brow furrowing in discontent as all the man did was bite his tongue and tremble.
“Well,” he continued with a breath, ruffling the man’s hair. “I lived under some very strange people. Not strange for my time, but strange in a retrospective — and lord, did they hate defiance. Sick little people they were, cruel, crude…”
He shifted on his rump uncomfortably, the topic weighing on him like he was piggybacking himself.
“I did something they very much didn’t like. My sister — lord, she was only 6. I took her when I ran. Couldn’t bear to leave her.” He stopped for a moment, breath trailing, before his tail confide its quiet thwacking on the step.
“They followed us into the big oak woods. Hell how they’d found us, we’d ran all we could’ve, practically had to carry her poor soul the whole way out there. Little legs aren’t good for stride. Don’t you think?”
He looked at the man, growing impatient, before angling his head up to look at him, leaning in with a snort and a snaggling tooth.
“Don’t you think?” He breathed a puff of hot air into the man’s face, warranting a quiet, cracking ‘Yes’ from him, sitting back once more, content with this.
He didn’t speak for some time, sort of staring off, idly.
“Well. They killed her first.” He spoke quieted, unable to hide the whimper in his vocals, fumbling with the man’s hair.
“It practically drove me mad. I remember feeling a damn ton of adrenaline. Didn’t even have a weapon. Christ, those hideous fowl.” He hissed, voice cracking, nose wrinkling up.
“Of course I didn’t win. They had those cruel little sickles. If they hadn’t, I would beat them to a pulp. I’m sure of it. But I think my retaliation made it worse on my part. They resented that.” He brought his stretched leg back up to his chest, drumming on the furry knee with his free hand.
“They didn’t kill me right then in there. They just had to separate me from her. They couldn’t give me that closure of death.” He croaked. Regardless of the lack of eyes, tears trembled at his voice, stifled by a dry swallow.
“I couldn’t move for damn shit. Twisted my elbow in. Stomped my shoulder. Practically maimed me. And yet, they made me stay awake the whole time, the whole time they buried her in that shallow mud, the whole time they dragged me back to the town in a haze. They just couldn’t let me die there.”
“Now look at me.” He pinched his brow between forefinger and thumb.
“They made an example of me. Strung me up and buried me. It didn’t take long for my lungs to give out. A disgusting, sulfur smelling, half-rotten wood casket, at least 8 feet of soil.” He gave the man’s nose a little nudge with his thick thumb, emotions welling higher as he got no words from him, no nothing.
“They don’t exist anymore.” He spoke.
“That cult of his. They died a little after I did. Burned away in time. Hideous hand sewn bird masks. Rotting hands — lord, I hate it, damn it all.” He stomped a hoof, causing the man to sharply inhale, bringing his attention back to him.
“I can’t even kill the men who killed me.” He looked at the man with a woeful face, his mood only worsened by that still carved look of terror, lifting his head back slightly to bite back grief.
“Can’t I?” He croaked, crass and crude, sniffling slightly as he looked at the man, no response, no nothing, no nothing.
“Can’t I?!” He groaned out, voice turning tearful and hideous, like a dying heifer.
“Lord, Lord, Please just talk to me! Just say anything!” His grasp tightened on the man’s skull.
“Lord!” He wailed out, now sobbing, slamming the man’s head into the wall with a shrill cry, a sickening crack, then again, and again, and again.
His hands grasped onto the back of the man’s head, fingers clasping over it, cries of woe and grief and shame and guilt billowing from his lungs in an ugly, sickening cry, hooves digging into the stone and leaving little chafed marks, snot dribbling down his lip.
“Please! Please!” He wailed, snap after crack after pop after crunch, blood spraying and spritzing down the walls in his sorrow, the man’s form long gone limp and halting its tremors, dead as dead.
His ears pinned back, wet globs of tears billowing down his face, wrinkled into a caricature of a sob, of a mourner at his own hands.
He finally dropped the man, letting out a loud, guttural wail, slamming himself back down onto the step, cupping his hands over where his eyes would’ve been, tears spilling out from underneath wrappings of vines and melded flesh, slowly melding into normal cries, then quiet sobs.
“I’m sorry!” He spat out through tears.
“Please, lord, please — I’m so sorry!”