Work Text:
A letter, the parchment itself clearly reforged in blood in preference of water. Black, oily ink spiders across the page in a skittering hand. A language encoded by and for only two people.
It is a leap of faith that you will be able to read it.
My dearest sibling Omen,
I have been thinking on you for the last days. Your inauspicious addition to my cult, (or perhaps Father’s cult, but we all know who does the work around here.) may not have led me to the conclusion our father may have wished.
You are a beast, my dear sibling. A force of nature and born violence I am certain our father appreciates. Your tenacity in feasting upon your prey is a sight to behold.
I have seen how you look upon Enver. I have witnessed the softness in your gaze. The longing in your stance.
You miss him.
I can hardly blame you. I have met no other person who might be a worthy match for myself or you. The truest children of Bhaal deserve no less than the most glorious of sires for their children.
But we both know it is more than that. Though we will never speak it. We will never acknowledge it save for knowing that a night should end with a bloody bed and yet we wake in perfumed sheets.
What do you feel when Father bids you hunt? Do you feel a hunger for flesh as your wolf does? Do you experience the sensation of drowning as the need takes you? Do you choose to commune with our nature as an old friend we are unable to kill?
I feel nothing when it takes me. I watch as my body becomes more akin to our father’s design and does his unholy work. I am a creature in his control, and it is freeing.
Is the transformation painful for you? I am not given to your abilities, and the glorious agony of becoming Father’s pride is a reverential experience. It is wondrous. I hope you experience something similar in your many shapes. I would not want to deprive you of our Father’s love.
Omen. Your name. The one you allow to pass our lips. A name given to you, as I understand it. A piece of you, named and altered by someone you value. I find myself jealous of you. I do not have any who call me other than what I chose. In Father’s name I slew those who knew me.
Are there any left who remember you? Have you faced fewer hurdles in removing the shame of your past self? I fear there is one final being that may yet know a dead child's name and apply it to me. I may one day, as the tide of blood consumes all of this wretched world, finally close that last chapter and unmake the memory of a weakling. I would envy your progress in my stead.
We are not the same person, my dear sibling.
Though we are professed to be that same creature made of Father’s blood alone; we are not the same. We are destined for the same glorious violence, but we are not One.
I have no brothers. I stand alone as heir to Bhaal’s Throne. I am destined to slay the last of his victims on his altar and bring a final, glorious culmination to this wretched world regardless of your place in it.
You, must return to your world once Father has deemed my lesson over. Or perhaps we make enough noise as to bring Ao into the picture. My goal is to return you to your home, dear sibling. You are wasted here, in this wrought cage you make a storm of noise in.
You make a beautiful wolf, beloved sibling. Your fur as supple and white as your hair. Your maw ferocious as you tear into the meat we feed you. You crave my blood, and I have fed you; witnessing the clarity in your eyes brings a satisfaction in my heart. You are at my mercy, little sibling. I could do what Father may have asked you to do to me.
One so rarely gets to slay oneself, after all.
Perhaps that is the lesson Father wishes of me. To prove that I am willing to kill any and all.
I am, of course. But is it not a shame? We could work such glorious atrocities together. Father, for all his power and Right, cannot see past the short term. He wishes for corpses. Blood. Bodies.
I wish to see every last heartbeat and greenery smote from the plane. And I cannot do that alone.
I allied with The Tyrant to mechanize the slaughter. To break the ground and burn the sky. What better than to turn all the world into a slow burning pyre? To watch as The Tyrant loses control of his flock and only too late does he realize his legacy is ending the world he wished to rule?
Father does not see the glory in it. How every person would be a murderer in part. Every last soul, an offering to him by my uncountable hands.
I watch you in the cage as I write this. You are twitching in your sleep. Wolfish yelps and groans as you are perhaps punished for your current failure.
You have not failed, little sibling. You have rendered the lesson clearly. I have strayed from Father’s wishes.
Your presence here is a warning I will heed with due caution.
But as I watch your slumbering lupine form, I must wonder a concept.
What does it take for us to be unafraid of Father’s disappointment?
Your ever devoted blood-kin,
Zealir, The First and Final of His Name