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Seeing your body laden in a spectral blue is not nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.
In your empty red eyes, I can only see a sorrow that is not allowed to exist there. A sorrow that is contagious, a sorrow that is eating away at me. The sorrow that lingers. The sorrow that was mixed in with your fear when you realized you had been betrayed.
Your body is hollow, without a soul. Why do I sense such emotion? My mind must be playing tricks on me.
I thought that by destroying you, by betraying you the way that the Sources did to me, I would gain satisfaction for overcoming my younger self that put me in that gods-forsaken prison. Instead, a sense of guilt is lodged within me, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. It may have been because of how soft and lonely your cries for a mother may have sounded in your sleep when you had laid next to my claw in my prison. It may be your eyes when they still held emotion, when they flickered from happiness to anger to grief, from love to fear to a complex hatred for me.
The trust you placed in me was foolish, so precious and innocent for a conqueror such as yourself.
I remember when you stumbled into my prison, drunk and angry because of how Zarkt failed you. How you sobbed in frustration about how you should have gone instead, how you had expected too much of him. The blame should not have gone to you, but you couldn’t stop thinking it should, apologizing to me over and over. I was angry, yes, but I did not have the heart to yell at you for it. The moment I had tried, my mouth felt more dry than it had in millennia.
Instead, I had tried to comfort you. Comfort was never a skill of mine, but you leaned into it as if it were instinct. I had softly stroked your cheek with a claw. It was awkward and my body was not made to interact with a wolf like you, and to make it even worse, you are a runt of the litter! A theoretical litter, of course. You were the only one your mother had conceived, besides your few-years-older brother, Nokt.
You, an unlucky pup.
Then a sad and angry girl, whose only loyalty was to your kin.
After, one by one, came your band of misfits that eventually became the Forbidden Five; people you had cherished but were too prideful to admit it.
Finally, you came to me.
From the moment we met, Rox, I sensed something in you so familiar, and it was not because I knew you would one day venture into my prison with your fellows to free me. There was something about your eyes that made me want to shout and tear things apart, to burn buildings and destroy cities with the slash of my tail. Your eyes; they were young and red and beautiful, with a fire in them so familiar. Now, they are miserable and fill me with dread. Like they see through me, giving me a sense of anxiety. I have nothing to hide from you anymore, I do not know why I am feeling such paranoia about it.
You, Rox, were like me, and deep down in our hearts, we both knew it. Your arrogance drew me in, your cockiness, your moments of foolish and misplaced immaturity for such a smart wolf. I used to be like you, a warrior seeking power, a warrior willing to do everything to get it.
That is why I did not wish for you to succeed. You were like a ghost of my past from the present, a threat to my identity. I had to destroy you. You were the better me, a parallel version of me had thrived with companionship, with trust in a team (or at least in some of your team).
I thought that destroying the version of me that was free, yet was bound to attachments, to mortal aspects by choice, like the bond of two siblings or that jackal woman you had called your lover. That sly hornet and that bumbling buffoon of a panther, prone to giving your team bad luck even in folklore, yet you had kept him.
You five were supposed to be a symbolism of my victory, you were meant to be my trophy, my greatest prize— I would have kept your body alive and your soul locked away for eternity in mirth.
Yet against all odds, I feel nothing of the sort. Instead, there is a weight in my chest, which I should not feel, since I am but a ghost. Sometimes, I catch myself looking forward to you returning with souls, just to see your face again, carrying out my goals for me.
You were always meant to help me fulfill my plans, Rox of The Wyldness, foolish girl.