Year 2: Inherited

Thoughts adrift on a sea of agony, Larkspur cannot remember how he got here.

He's not even sure where "here" is, whether it's warm or cold, where most of his armor has gone, why his runeblade isn't close enough to grasp; only that he is shattered by pain, awash in it, gorged on such a surfeit that even he can only feel the ache and not the satisfaction.

But that is the point of punishment. And he is being punished here with splinters in his hands and a great gaping deathwound in his essence as if he were a gutted fish on display at market, and even if can't remember the hows and wheres the why and the who are graven into every moment that he lies there with ichor pooling in his throat and silence in his ears.

"You may scream, if you wish to. If you are still able."

He isn't thinking ahead of his instincts again, that's the whole problem, letting himself be distracted and making stupid, selfish animal mistakes. Sleeping with Mornherald's partner. Tormenting the junior knight with unwanted advances. Prying off his head amidst terror and hurt so obvious anyone could taste it, all to satisfy his own sick curiosity.

And isn't it a fitting punishment to discover his chosen replacement is himself rotting from the inside out? Because he wasn't thinking, he was doing this all Wrong, and even the world recognized and objected. Lark tries to laugh and begins coughing instead, spitting up black foam.

It's Wrong, taking someone and making something of them they aren't; Wrong, shattering a friendship simply by being in the middle of it; and Wrong, Wrong, Wrong to give orders just because he knew they couldn't be disobeyed, just because he could taste the terror they evoked. Just because it gives him a thrill to have someone obey him for once.

"But Mommy, I don't want to--"
"I know you don't want to disappoint me either, sweetie. Do you want to disappoint Mommy?"
"No-o."
"Then you'll do this one thing for her."

Pain lances through his head and chest as he starts to laugh again, unable to control himself. I'm turning into Mother. It's not enough that he lose everything that makes him an individual and a person on the way to becoming a mindless beast; he has to become everything terrible he's inherited, everything he despises in a person, first.

Fucking fate.

He laughs until he can't any longer, until his useless lungs fill up with liquid and he blacks out from agony again.

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Taproot -- "She", Assemblage 23 -- "Collapse", Three Days Grace -- "Animal I Have Become"