between hell.

V

act one: the limbo

part five: sever

I let go of only that which does not serve me:

that is my strength, not my cowardice.

-Segovia Amil.

XYLAN GALNAV

The souls, underneath the quaking surface were awoken, the day Xylan Galnav made his escape from Vajhyabonde, the agony that had once shackled him to his sanity.

The ground underneath Xylan's feet was usually laced with blood and starvation, but that night it was knives forged in the fire of freedom. He treaded on its sharp blade, it wounded him but he didn't mind.

Scars of rebellion danced on the skin of the boy, the young boy who had been captured just a while ago, as flames consumed every inch of his skin. Lethal screams played on his Rebel tongue, whose name no one bothered to remember. His lips curled to form the blessed words of a sinner, of a Rebel. He was imploring mercy, but Melinoe Miyernev, seated on her high throne, knew nothing of the word.

The taste of wine enshrouded the Queen's sadistic mouth, and she listened to his shrieks that were as loud as the cracks of the whip. His skin peeled off his bones, slowly but steadily. The cuts on his back threatened to engulf him, and they almost shrouded him. His screams ravaged the silence.

His back was bare, but he was layered in fury and wrath. They were both his salient weapons, but he couldn't brandish them. The isignia of their fear; the gyves around his ankles, his hands and his mind, spoke for what was running through their minds. The fear of Death, and that he may be the harbinger of their end, if he broke out of the rotten, iron manacles. He execrated frailty, as much as he loathed Melinoe Miyernev. Maybe more.

Strike after strike after strike. His back was being carved open with a blazing inferno's touch.

His eyes had travelled to the woman, clad in the atramentous leather, the one that had brought him that fate. She was propped against a pillar in the Court, her cold eyes on him but her mind was somewhere else. Her darkness-blanched hair lay down on her shoulder, and her amarathine irises remained apathetic.

Xylan was going to drown himself in the ichor of his enemies, and their sinistrous bone shards in between his fingers. Xylan was not one to be forgotten, he would never be forgotten. For chaos wasn't his master. It was his slave, he wielded it like a sword. The shadows crafted from corpses hung over his back, the fissures in his soul bled tenebrosity.

He was darkness, trapped in a cage of bones.

The brutality of the whip had stopped attacking him and he realized he was on the floor. Xylan raised his head, letting his gaze bore into Melinoe's. He had vowed to free the Realm from the malevolent claws of the Makhione. They had already gripped their bodies, but never their heart. Never their soul. Twisting tongues, lying lips.

He couldn't wait to be free from the clutches of himself.

"Tell us where your consiglieri are, Galnav. It'll be good for your health," Twisting tongues, lying lips. Even if he told the Queen where the hideouts were, she wouldn't let them or him live.

"Never." He breathed out.

"Take him back to his chambers. We shall try again tomorrow. If he doesn't speak.... it's blood in the water." The poison-laced words of Melinoe Miyernev didn't scare him.

Voracious vultures, malicious man-eaters. Twisting tongues, lying lips.

The city of Easby was melded from melted marrow of slaves and imprisoned Rebels, but it was idyllic. The hood of his coat was pulled over his head, to hide the mop of his flaxen hair. Souls whizzed past him, he was just a meaningless body to them. Bloodlust threaded to form a rope, was just a noose around his neck.

Xylan wanted to sink his knife into the smooth neck of an Easbian. How he craved it, the sight of their blood watering and tinting the awake, quavering souls. Their spindly bones reaching up, craving the taste of it. He wanted to slowly slit their throats, hear them screaming, as he carved and gashed their mouth, creating a masterpiece. The cinnabar, broken spine of the victim would be lain alongside the deviant body of Easby. It was his sick fantasy, to see the hollow ruins of the former city, capital of the Realm, buried under the cadavers of all those he abhorred.

He was going to obliterate Easby.

*

A/N: I'm still alive. I know, surprising. Anyways, hope this makes up for the long wait.