Thread:Jaguar Satake/@comment-34158552-20190627220854/@comment-34158552-20190715180345

"Tears from Heaven" by Efisio Cross is a nice song but I might cry

writing to this song, man

especially writing this scene:

Beneath the swirling, furious sky, the fireblood was dying.

Horrible deathfrost glittered in every last one of his wounds, and he could feel the constant fire in his chest fading into frigid ashes. The merciless arctic claws of a living winter scarred into his soul as he froze to death in the terrible pit, shackled to the icy floor. The temperature dropped, and dropped, and dropped, and crystals of ice crawled on his flesh. He had never known this much pain, not even in the torture chamber. It was like being slowly submerged into a bank of burning snow from hell, like a thousand acidic blades cutting into his flesh all at once, like being ripped apart by an unfathomably cold, unfathomably horrid beast.

This was the hospitality of the Ancient Kingdom.

He looked up at the Angel samurai who was watching him die, looking on with the grim satisfaction of seeing an Empowered perish. Above the crackling of the ice that crept towards his heart, he could hear the words being spoken to him.

"Shinobi, you face death for conspiring against His Lordship,” the samurai said, maintaining his grim expression despite the anger that rose in his voice at the very mention of the plot against Shogun Ethereal.

Ah, yes. It had quite infuriated them when they had found out about the rebels’ plan to get rid of that [...] once and for all. Whichever one he was – every Ancient Kingdom shogun took that name and hid his face behind a mask. No one knew where one shogun’s reign ended and another’s began, rendering him truly immortal. Or so he thought; the fireblood could have ended his life so quickly and easily. If only he hadn’t been caught. ..

The ice became too loud and too painful; he didn’t hear the rest of what the samurai said. Most likely, he thought through the pain he refused to show any reaction to, it was a heartfelt speech about how every [...] Empowered deserved to die like this because they were monstrosities and a host of other awful things in the eyes of the Ancient Kingdom. Because they were too powerful, because they were a threat to everyone. . . and that was why they were being hunted and killed, tracked down and destroyed. It was heartless, it was horrible, but it was for “the good of Samurath”, because Empowered were a “danger to us all”.

Filthy lies.

Like that cursed scar hadn’t brought the Empowered enough suffering already.

He knew his own scar glared at the samurai like a final challenge, a scar that never healed nor faded, a terrible curse mark that every Empowered had. Distantly he remembered the knife in the mist. ..

But what did the fragments of an old nightmare matter in his dying moments?

Glowering up at the samurai with the fierce determination to hold on to life as long as he could, the fireblood was filled with hatred for the failed mission, hatred that he hid well. If only they hadn’t failed. The Empowered wouldn’t be hunted anymore if the Ancients hadn’t found out. ..

Found out.

No.

Someone had told them.

The fireblood knew, and though he was much too composed of a man to allow his fury to consume him, he very strongly disliked whoever had broken the vow of secrecy and quite frankly wanted to feed their entrails to the nastiest beast in hell. As for who it was. . . he didn’t know. He wouldn’t know, because he would be dead soon. And that. . . he hated that. . . he wanted to know who he was going to hell with. ..

Or. . . perhaps he wasn’t entirely a villain. Perhaps he wouldn't go to hell. There were the unspeakable things he had done prior to being recruited by the rebels, but there was also. ..

Through the excruciating pain, the memory of a little girl – Storm – managed to surface, and with her image came that of an older (but no less little from the fireblood’s perspective) boy, Jaguar. The images of their parents – Fern and Thorn – emerged next, and he realized that maybe everything he’d done for them could get him a pass to the Distant Stars after all. Protecting the kids. . . raising them to be shinobi. . . giving the family a place to live, hidden safely away from the eyes of the Ancients. . . fighting for them. ..

And helping the rebels, helping Armistice. . . here he was, dying for them. . . he had finally fought for what was right. ..

Shogun Ethereal still lived. The plot had failed. But he’d fought his hardest, his bravest, braver than he ever thought he could, and here he was, dying even braver.

And even when he died, the rebellion would live. The Seven Empowered were coming – he could feel it – and they would punish these [...] for their centuries of cruelty. The family he held so dearly to what remained of his heart would be safe, the resistance would be victorious, and Samurath would know the peace it deserved.