Icarus's blog: "Somantics"

"What is this?"
Charcoal, so fine, still warm and smoldering. Swept in the wind turning the sky black, and toxic.
Crumbling in his fingers like the last remnants of hope.
This was peace.
This was beauty.
This was home.

The fires no longer roared, only meekly murmured around him. All had been razed, all had been levelled, the horizon in all directions was like finely driven black snow over a sharp alien landscape. The sun a scornful spectator hung malevelontly from a safe distance.

Unaware of the charred earth, the thundering in his skull, the dark dervish and spinstorms around him.
He cups his hands to his eyes, leaving long, black streaks across his face, not a howl or a wail of vengeance, but a moan.
An injured and sick noise fell from him.
This was despair.
And it was music to demons' ears.

One in particular took notice that day. Idly picking through the refuse and cinder, taking a moment to puppet a dolly into a macabre dance and frolick. A smokey, filthy little thing, hand-carved and painted eyes, painted smile... much loved and tagged along during its owner's life. Perhaps even a legacy, a hand me down from an older sibling... or even one's mother.
The demon wondered what it was to have a mother, having always simply "been". And what it was to have love.

In his idlings, he picked up a peculiar tune.

One of promise and such melodic dissonance.
Like every flavor of negativity, in all the right proportions.
Enkechel took a few unheard footprints in the fine sand of bone and civilization toward the lone man weeping at what was once his front door.

"Were they precious to you?" His mouthless face echoed the words of men with the peculiar empty accent of upper-suffering.
His voice was like a thousand whispers of the damned converging and erupting softly from where his lips should have been.
The grey emptiness of his body conforming to a more recognizeable shape as the man's sorrow became more tangible.
Enkechel brushed his long, shadowy claw against the dark, gritty tears streaming down the man's face.
A soldier... or what was left of one.
All fancy with buckles and once shiny armor, tarnished and dulled by the powdery remains of his world.
Yet in such immaculate condition... had this man never been in a fight?
... and then it dawned on Enkechel.t
"Deserter" His eyes danced with glee.
But as the demon peered deeper into the man's heart and despair
it wasn't that he wouldn't help them...
it was that he couldn't.

"Champion?"

was not only brave, but also virtuous. He ...
Enkechel began to laugh, sputtering and swiping at his face as a few souls he hadn't fully digested began to hiccup (that's the best word for it) out of his body.
He couldn't contain his excitement any longer, he had to manifest before this man- he had to hear it for himself.

... there was no need to appear as a cloaked stranger, nor any pretense of ally, peddler or tempter.
Enkechel decided to appear as he truly was.
Writhing in the chaos of darkness and sorrow. Seeping tiny leftovers of spirits and sadness as they were devoured and discarded.

"So this is all it took? The whole slaughter of your people, your kingdom, your family, before you gave up any hope of peace?"
The man's body unclenched and his hands fell limply at his sides.
"Genocide makes you believe peace is not possible?"
The demon placed his fingers gently in the mans sooty hair, soothingly brushing out some of the grit.

"I... I thought my resignation... my words... if I refused-"
"you should have brought your family with you in exhile, at least they believed you, but no, you had to go gallavanting about on your spirit quest- you had to feel like a man again, you had to return a legend with some holy bauble so they'd listen to you"
"That's not-"
"It was." Enkechel clasped the man's head and yanked his face up to his. "YOU did this- YOU wraught this with your ridiculous romanticism! You could've saved them, I see it in your pure, glittering heart, you could've brought the heavens down upon your enemies with ONE war cry, and one great flash of steel but you! YOU! Abandoned them! Hero? Champion? Paragon! Hah! Your power means nothing to the dead. Your allies? Your family? Your brothers!? They're all just scraps to pick over and fill my kind-" He flung the man's head back, tossing him into the soot.
"and we thank you for this bounty" Enkechel turned to leave.

"Wait!" the soldier cried after him.
Enkechel knew it... for some reason you always get the right kind of flies with vinegar.