Page 28 of Angel in Absentia
He closed his eyes to the night, to the castle, centering his focus beyond the surrounding silence and the quiet of the constant, immovable darkness within.
Prince waited patiently.
Ryson took a deep breath as he lifted his chin, chest swelling with the coolness of the air. He listened to the light, quiet flutter of a heart that was not his own. He’d awoken from the depths of his slumber with just that sound and was changed by the melody of it. A campfire in the forest, it was a beautiful tether back to life again, a single string that connected him to everything. At last, he’d been inspired to create art again, inspired to move, and live, and exist, feeling the influence of her heart through his body. The tempo of her heart had become the backdrop of his own life.
He lifted his hands in the darkness as if he could feel time slipping through his fingers, each moment like a string he was preparing to play, and he could hear the thump of that lively, light heart in the background, setting the tempo for the song to come.
He rotated the knife in his hand and moved it through the air. He took a step, the metal of his boots clipping against the stone. Hetook two more, opening his eyes, as he carved the knife against the stone.
What are you doing?
“Shh,” Ryson said, lifting a hand to the air. “Listen. The song is starting.” He rolled his hand through the air before slipping toward King Belgear’s vivid celebration. He eased through the dark and ghosted through the corridor, watching the long table of Venennin in the center of the room before an ornate chair. They were all drunk with the blood of Veilin tied up on the table. There was a man and a woman, the woman drained and her corpse lying pale and lifeless. The man still rolled his head from side to side in murky suffering.
Fires burned in celebration; Venennin played cruel games that creatively wove in suffering and desire, binds and weapons, cuts and caresses interlaced in a sea of roiling bodies. Everyone was so distracted in the drunken tide that Ryson was simply another figure as he entered the room. Despite the music they played, he listened to the song building beyond them.
Thump. Thump. Thump.The quiet heartbeat still played in the background of his mind, setting the pace.
Many open arches exposed the room’s festivities to the world beyond, a world carrying out its own celebration. Naked, bloodied bodies writhed either in pain or pleasure, decorating nearby carpets and couches with coiling movement. Ryson had long respected that it was often hard to tell the difference between pain and pleasure, and somewhat passively acknowledged how long it had been since he’d had the opportunity to lose himself in either.
He flipped the knife in his hand, easing up behind the main chair of the table where the Venennin Lord of the Belgears cheered and celebrated, a near-empty chalice lifted for another service of Veilin blood.
Ryson was pleased to see that the king in fact was wearing the hideous celebratory coat with the fur around the collar. Ryson snaked down from behind his head, one hand gently covering the lord’s around the chalice as if prepared to fill his cup. The lord was in a daze, realizing too late that the hand over his was not one of his servants.
Ryson used his other hand to pull the blade hot and fast across the lord’s throat, anchoring the chalice close enough under his neck as he used the dagger blade to tip the man’s chin up and empty his own blood into the chalice.
It took a moment for the room to recognize what had happened. One Venennin nearby screamed in gurgling astonishment that parsed itself from the shouts and moans of the room. When others turned, mid-laughter, and saw the picture, too bizarre to immediately contest, they were struck into silence. In the midst of revelry, silence spread like a disease. Ryson circled around the throne, bloodied goblet in his hand, dripping knife in the other.
He tapped the knife lightly against the edge of the chalice, mirroring the music of the heart in his ears and the clip of his steps. The rest of the room that had still been too drunk or distracted to notice the change in events fell into silence as if they could hear the music too.
“A toast,” he said, circling the table as he eyed each and every Venennin, others straightening from a slouch at the table or uncoiling from a mass of entangled bodies.
The lord’s dead body shifted; everyone’s heads looked up at his seat as he lifted from the chair like a puppet.
“Let’s honor the Lord of Belgear!” Ryson lifted the chalice from the opposite side of the table in cheers, and the dead king swept up a chalice from the table, possessed in Prince’s power, and offered a cheer. “By cien, what a feat!” Ryson continued pacing around the table, walking and speaking in a tempo known only to himself, but faintly recognizable to the world. “You’ve secured the lands of Shambelin!”
He circled until he was back at the king’s opposite side. “Lord Belgear, what did you say was one of your greatest accomplishments?”
Ryson set the chalice down, and the lord’s body moved and bobbed its arms, taking the bloodied chalice and drinking from it while Ryson, through a rather adept skill at ventriloquism, offered the response, “I’ve also conquered the Insednians!”
Back to his own voice and gesturing at the corpse, Ryson said, “And by cien, didn’t you conquer me with delight? Your lord chased an illusion. Tonight, he grasped it.”
He snapped his fingers, and the fires in the room were extinguished. Half of the room stood, eyes flashing silver as they turned on the other half. A quick and bloody slaughter ensued as Ryson put his dagger away and leaned over toward the king.
“Your pacing was off. We practiced this,” Ryson said over the chaos before dodging a flash of blood from an open jugular as it sizzled past his face. A head rolled off to the left, and he craned his neck as it toppled down a long set of stairs.
You never actually say the lines you tell me you’re going to say. No one can hear your music.
“You know how much I love improvisation,” Ryson said, still curiously watching the head as it rolled down a separate staircase and then another. From this vantage point, he very well may be able to watch it roll down the entirety of the castle steps. He’d never seen a head roll that far.
It plopped into a bucket and promptly stopped. He sighed, now disinterested as he turned his gaze back to the quiet of the room and flipped his knife. He strode through the room, his feet moving in slow seconds as he counted.
He returned from the brief interlude, zeroing in on the heartbeat again. The heartbeat of life. Her heartbeat. It made the end of this song possible, made it all possible.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He lifted the blade, moving his hands through the air as he closed his eyes again, the song reaching a crescendo.
“The trumpets,” he said, gesturing to the left beyond the wall, and trumpets signaling an alarm flared across the city.
