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The dead are loud.
Maybe it’s the mist around him. Maybe it’s the sleepless hours he’s already spent like this.
Dion’s muscles burn with exertion. There’s blood dripping from his sword, a monster at his feet. Time and time again, Dion has proved there is nothing here more monstrous than him and yet –
It a speck.
Just one speck of black in cloudy white fog.
There’s a pull at the back of his neck. The sword in his hand whips through the air with how fast he turns – only to freeze.
Eyes as red as his. A sharp angled face that resembles his, only older than Dion ever expects to be.
For a dead man, Lante Agriche looks quite well.
He stares at Dion, then looks to the monster at his feet and laughs.
And laughs and laughs.
“This –” Father gasps. “This is what you do with me gone?” The man lets out another bark, sharper, more cutting than any Dion’s heard from the man when alive.
“Shut it.”
The dead man does not.
“I said, shut up!”
The dead man continues to laugh. Dion should act. He should cut him down again, slice him into so many pieces even the House of Gold won’t be able to salvage the remains.
Dion’s arms feel numb.
Father laughs until with a sudden click of his throat – he stops.
“You’re life had more purpose before.”
Dion doesn’t know when Father disappears. Just that when he does Dion can’t hear him anymore.
--------------
Is Dion dead?
The mist around him feels endless. He’s been walking for what must be days.
Maybe years.
If Dion is dead then Father being here with him makes sense.
Lante throws his hands up in the air and stretches, leisurely keeping pace with Dion
“So,” Father starts somewhere between the thirtieth or thirty-first minute since he’s stepped out of the mist. “What did that bitch really offer you that you went and betrayed me?”
Dion remains silent.
If Dion is dead then talking to Father has no value. If Father is a hallucination he should know the answer to that question already.
“Ignoring me, huh?” Father scoffs. “Did you at least get to fuck her before she croaked it?”
Dion stops.
“Ooohhhh,” the dead man-hallucination jeers. “Didn’t even get to do that, eh?"
“She isn’t dead,” Dion tells him, staring Father down. He’s taller than him now. Taller than he had been before.
Or maybe Father is the one who’s shrunk in death.
“What makes you say that?” Father frowns.
“She’d be here with us if she was dead.”
A moment. Then another.
Father burst out laughing. “Oh you’re serious? That’s hilarious – just fucking hilarious. So sure she’d end up in the same place as you and I huh, son?”
Dion blinked. Perhaps Father had lost his mind when he died the way he did, always so sure of his own omnipotence until the day he’d been proven brutally wrong.
Who then should care for the inane mutterings of a madman?
Of course, Roxana would come here when she died. The same sins bound them.
She had to. Blue couldn’t save her from this – never this.
--------------
Father is taller now – first by a head, then two. A tall lanky frame, stretching up to the sky. His red eyes peer down at Dion, a smile stretching wider and wider across his face as Dion continues walking.
Dion’s searching for something now – or at least Dion thinks he might be. He can’t name what it is. He just has to find it and then he’ll know where he’s supposed to be walking to.
Father’s steps are long, his one stride equal to five of Dion’s.
It’s not long before Dion has to start running to keep up.
Father is no longer returning to the mist and each time Dion thinks to slow, thinks to change course, the mist creeps in closer and closer – covering him. Something tells him there will be a time where it won’t pull back, that Father is waiting for that moment.
Dion stumbles.
It’s strange. The dirt beneath his palms doesn’t make sense.
Father looks down at him, a white crescent moon shape in all that black.
Was Dion always this small? Was there ever a time in his life where he had tripped?
No.
No. This will all make sense. He just has to find –
“She’s not here,” Father says, amusement dripping from his voice. “You won’t find her.”
Dion stares into the mist again, noting how similar it all looks. How same.
Has he been walking at all?
“She has to.” Dion insists. “The House of Blue can’t change tha –”
Father laughs. Shirking and high. “No it can’t! It can’t!”
It can’t. It can’t It can’t It –
“But did it ever need to?” Father asks.
Dion can’t breathe. He looks up.
Father is grinning, blood red eyes gleam with vindictive delight.
“But did Blue ever need to save her when she was always so different from you and I?”
The realization hits.
He won’t find her.
His father’s laugh is all Dion hears as the mist closes in and swallows him whole.