[Novel Drabble] “Love is never Gentle, and Grief gives way to Hate.” (Drefan’s POV)

[nathanialroyale]

Title: Love is never gentle, and Grief gives way to Hate.
Rating: (Heavy PG-13) 
Content Notes/Warnings: Ending of the First Novel. Character Death.  

My brother died yesterday in real life. Drefan has lost his, so I let him speak of his loss so maybe I can understand my own.

Warnings: Death.

Main Character/s: Nathanial Peter Quele Royale, Thom Antsrev Royale, Drefan Robert Royale
Plot: When Drefan loses his brother Thom, everything follows into a 3 year night, where Gods fell to mortal suffering, and their minds broke as easily as those they had labored to defend. 
Location: illander castle, illander city.

-

Wasting away, that was the hardest part of it, watching him die. I had thought the knowledge that his death was on my hands would hound me far worse then this, the physical representation of it all. But no, the wheezing breaths, the shut, dull eyes were much, much worse. 

The grey pallor that would give way to blue, the poor circulation that Thom already had only making the transformation from living to dead that much quicker. Nathanael is whispering to him, clutching his hand, making promises, as if the future matters at all. 

My grief has never been easy, it has always transformed itself into something more, the bitterness twisting it into rage. Always I would attempt to shift the blame, to put that hate on someone else, anyone else but me. If the grief turned to rage, and rage into hatred, I could push away all of these actualities.

Thom was going to die today, and I could blame everyone under the sun, but that wasn’t going to change the fact that this was going to destroy me.

I’ve never been a happy person, my people call me their ‘Bitter Prince’ for a number of reasons, and it was in his smile that the rays of hope shone. But there would be no hope, no dreams, not after this. I was the last one of us, father - deceased, mother - deceased, and now Thom who die as well. 

Where did that leave our people? 
Where did that leave me?

I feel it before I see it, as my eyes are starring at the infirmary wall, and I force myself to look down as Nathanael begins to cry, head buried in my brother’s chest. 

It’s done. 
It’s over, and I’m alone.

My head snaps up, as agony wracks through my mind, and that voice, that comfort I have depended upon for these last three years is panicking. The breaths that come are faltering, stuttering as I feel myself rise from Thom’s bedside. The darkness envelops me once again, and I allow myself to snap free from the tethers of this reality. 

It looms below us, the Abyss, and this time I do not feel it as my body rears up from the bedside, back hitting the wall as shudders wrack every one of my limbs. Digits have dug into pockets, and the black diamond nearly spills from my fingertips as it is loosened from the material coverings. 

Held up now, I can see the black diamond sitting upon my open palm over my brother’s body and my lips open. Yes, the words are my own, and yet they are not only mine, two voices leak free, and they overlay the words that we need to say.

“I won’t be left behind. I won’t be made to be alone. These are not my sins, I will not be damned! Purple skies…and broken glass…”

Endless seas and memories of the past,
Purple skies and broken glass,
Shattered minds, where there is no rest,
Hatred and grief, that breaks the best of us.

Thom’s soul rose from the body on that bed, a ball of glowing white light. It would be captured then, filling the black diamond. Never be alone…

In a moment of control, and with such reverence and tenderness, contrary to the way my body seemed to quiver and jerk, would I slip that diamond away into my pocket. Safe. 

With that act complete we surged forward, around the bed, and our darkness did not only crawl its way up our limbs, no, now it wrapped around us in flames. Black leaking purple, climbing and falling as the infirmary melted away into the castle’s main hall. 

They would scream, and they would beg and plead, they would know what it meant to lose my brother, my mother, and the people I had only ever wanted to defend! 

All there was now, was that hypnotic fire, rising into the night that had eclipsed this noontime sunlight, taking with it all that stood in our way, all that brought us to this day. 

Enraged yells, and so many screams.

Laughter fills the air, a maniacal sound, the laughter of the deranged, and it’s owner… its progenitor is me.