The Plague King
how terrible a force he was.
He was a hungry and parasitic creature
a god
spreading himself through possession and trickery.
None
not even his own sister
were exempt from this
though this may have been because they were not truly bound
not by blood
at least.
Iel
fearful of her brother’s plots
chose to store her power in the form of a child
to distance it from him.
Ios
devilishly clever as he is
saw through this plan
and hatched a scheme of his own.
He followed her to where she would create her child
and then he destroyed her as she birthed it.
He planned to raise the child
until it was old enough for him to properly control it
control its power.
Power
born as a set of twins
and this Ios could not have accounted for.
The boy and a girl lay in the dust of their mother
the menacing
hateful body
of that who killed their mother
stood over them.
The girl cries and the boy smiles.
Ios
in his pride
is sure of the strength residing in the smiling boy
disregarding the crying girl.
The ruse is successful.
Iel
she lives on in her daughter.
Years later
Caius stands in a field outside a winding tower.
A wooden training dummy stands
the boy battering it half-heartedly with a wooden sword.
The watchful eye of his caretaker stares him down
from across the field.
Within the winding tower
Claire sits.
A pen is gripped
the girl absentmindedly crushing it in her hand.
Her rageful eye stares her brother down
from the tower window.
Caius
despairs at his regimen.
A yearly report of his progress
Ios is told that the boy has not improved.
He sits in the field and plays with the grass
he has no power of his own.
Ios does not consider that he may have chosen the wrong child.
He doubles down on the boy
ordering that his training becomes ever more demanding.
Siblings
experience simultaneous but opposite pain.
The boy breaks
he retreats into his solitude
his room in the tower
a seed giving up after minimal sprouting.
The girl breaks
she breaches from her jealousy
from her prison in the tower
a seed germinating after ample time passes.
Iel
her power makes itself manifest
in Claire
after 13 years of dormancy.
Claire raises her tower and strikes down her brother’s overseer
she exits, leaving her brother behind.
The boy is abandoned
bleeding and unbalanced
on the grassy earth.
The prodigal son reigns supreme.
The weak boy lies unconscious.
The Son leaves
fuming and unhinged
to the fiery stars.
Claire
her name
The Son allows to stay.
Claire
her selfhood
The Son does away with.
He is naught but an agent of vengeance
against the killer of his mother
and a harbinger of chaos
against all between the two.
Ios
the search for him does not come easy
as Claire comes close
all she finds
time and time again
is the sickness he leaves behind.
A wartime nation ravaged with flu.
A child sold for power
leaving the brother without a peer.
A deceased wife
striking her husband with grief.
A child imprisoned and marked with his power
this hurt Claire the most.
Josephine
the poor thing.
Such similar rage
such similar circumstances.
Claire met someone who he wished he could have been
a girl in a lab sent through trials
for the gain of some higher power.
He sees in this girl an isolation like his
he grants her insight into the faculties around her.
Claire proceeds towards Ios
for the first time with an ally in the form of his own daughter.
Josephine
she tells The Son all she knows about her father
what sorceries and sciences he works.
The Son tracks the scientist and offers him a choice:
He may die now and leave behind his daughter and his findings
or
He may drag Ios out of him and into the world
live the life of a normal man with his daughter.
Arthur
freed of his eternal pact.
The scientist learns to walk again
he learns to be a father
He is Arthur wholly and truly.
The Plague King learns to exist again
he learns what pain is
he is defeated wholly and truly.
Ios
lives no longer.
The Son avenges his mother
he finds retribution for his brother
he finds closure for his closest friend
and her father.
If only she could have lived to see it happen.
Claire
existing as both brother and sister
allows The Son to live on within him.
Caius
existing as simply as he may
allows solitude to absolve his pain.
Josephine
serving her purpose to undo her father’s sins
dies.
Arthur
learning to die
spends his last years finally free.