Antagonist

#WedWIPAesthetic 15.05.19 – Antagonist

Above us, the sky is painted in red. Behind us, the alley is dark. A shadow moves.

And then something slams into me from behind. Felic screams as my face smashes into the road. Dazed, coughing as silver blood drips from my mouth, I squirm under the weight between my shoulders. A hand presses into the back of my head.

For a moment, I am lost in the panic. Felic’s cries are muffled as my breathing is stifled against the ground. I can only hear the rush of blood in my ears, which sounds more like the explosion of stars than a river of blood. The knee in my back isn’t a sharp pain, but something inconsequential as stars burst across my vision. I am lost in the chaos of life and death.

Then a sword glances off the street next to my head, sending sparks flying into my face, and the world is suddenly thrust back into sound and sensation.

“Wait,” says the voice I never thought I would have to hear again, turning my blood from fire to ice. The weight lifts off my shoulders and I raise my head, feeling a darkness fall over me as I beg the stars to take it all back, to let this be a dream, to kill me before I have to lay my eyes on him.

Red bleeds across the sky, blotting out all the stars.

He stands in front me, cut from the same shadows that have haunted me since the day my mother died. Everything about him seems to move by its own will — from his cloak of pure night to his hair to the dying galaxies caught in his black hole eyes.

“She’s mine,” he says to the king, his voice like many stars colliding together.