Anjel
Your feet once walked a barren planet, Wastrel. Your steps turned the black earth to dust. The whole world was your highway, was it not? You were a traveler in search of a destination that did not exist. It should have brought you transcendence, but you threw aside your halo and took up a mantle of clouds.
Harbinger, you bring the dark with you. Storms billow at your back and the birds flee swiftly before you. You should be with them, your feet should not be deigned to touch upon the world like those copper-souls. But your soul is the most copper of them all, and despite the shroud you wear the light still falls upon you and lights it up like gold.
You don't deserve it.
Twelve ringed planets float above you, and they are halved and filled with liquid ambrosia.
I am the ghost, born of moonlight and spun of smoke. I can only be seen in a mirror. But you know that, now don't you? While you were wandering your bleak lands, I was left behind in the blue hills that you left in rain. I waited for you, but you never came. I envied, and grass sprung at my feet. The seasons changed, and the leaves turned red and fell all around me.
But I'm not totally alone. There's a tower here also. Well, it's the ghost of a tower, and at its top is the ghost of a god with a very real crown. It's made of onyx, twisting up into spires like stakes. I wonder – if I were to stab you through the heart with it, would you die?
No, you wouldn't. Your heart, it was locked up a long time ago in a sturdy strongbox under chain, and buried somewhere in the sands. Of a real desert, or of time? It may have been real once, but I think it is the latter now.
You know what is said, Wastrel Harbinger? Even demons have hearts. Sure, they're black, but they still have them. You lost yours somewhere along the way. I know for a fact that demons have hearts even though I've never met one, for woven from the blackest of them is the aura that the castle over yonder hill is cloaked in. Her name is Agrippa, but she is a king. I think that the ghost god's crown should go to the She-King.
She is surely the mother to the tower.
Outposts in the jungle and the stolen warrior painted bright laments for the converted.
And you, where were you when the dead soldiers walking ascended the ziggurat? Where were you in the prayers? Or perhaps you were in the jagged edge of the obsidian? They did not find you in the black eyeholes of the birdman's mask, undoubtedly.
Your blood is in theirs, running down the steps. I will see to this. Watch your back, for worldly concerns such as weather are of no concern to a ghost, and your rains will drench any fires set to purify. But above all, avoid all mirrors. Blind yourself if you must, but I am not to be evaded.Ha