I need you to be a monster
which is to say, I am trying not to love you
He has almost tuned out Pollux’s grief. Maybe it’s callous – this is the man Rapt served, his temporary master, should he not grieve alongside him? – but Rapt is so damn tired, and so the wailing and gnashing of teeth blends with the sound of the waves as endless, tuneless noise. Rapt keeps looking out to sea. To that floating monster.
There is a hand on his neck. Pollux. He looks like a different man, now, grief having laid its infinite weight on him. Pollux’s hand reaches up and frees the bridle from Rapt’s head, lets it drop into the ocean.
Shame, that. It had been a lovely thing, and Rapt had worn it well. He grieves that more than he does Castor, which he knows, faintly, is a blasphemous thing. But Castor had not mattered to Rapt. Castor had slit his mount’s throat to chum the waters for a beast who couldn’t even manage to kill him.
Pollux gasps, then, a small, sharp intake of breath. Rapt can’t tell if it’s joy or pain – maybe both – because he looks over and Pollux is changing, dissolving, and at their feet Castor’s body is doing the same. From skin to stardust, Rapt watches this transformation, watches the twin trails of light take off for the sky.
This is impossible, thinks Rapt, as he watches the stars settle in the sky, resting above the still floating body of a monster.
Rapt steps out of the ocean, finally. He is so much heavier on the beach. Sand sticks to his damp skin. He realizes faintly that his healing has returned, and the wound on his neck has scabbed over. But the healing can do nothing for his exhaustion, for his loss.
The bridle washes to shore at his feet. He touches it. It feels like the only tangible thing left, maybe.
He looks back out, still drawn to the slain monster.
Except it is gone.
Instead, the waves are churning again, frothing, and Rapt thinks oh, it’s alive.
Thinks, oh, this was all for nothing.
But it is not the previous monster who rises from the sea, it is a new beast. Its claws knock out their warning, and Rapt thinks of rattlesnakes. He’d nearly stepped on one, once, and when the air filled with its knell a strange feeling had rushed over his skin, the adrenaline of skirting so close to something so deadly.
The feeling now is not so potent – he has already faced so much death – but adrenaline fills him nonetheless, because this strange beast has locked its beady eyes on him, and is moving closer.
To be clear – Rapt is not a fighter. All his life, he has preferred to wear the bruises rather than give them. He knows nothing of how to wield his body like a weapon, to make use of the paltry tools he is equipped with.
(For he has no powers, save for the ability to heal himself. And even that is weak, here – his wound had already reopened, as if the magic cannot maintain its hold.)
Rapt is not a fighter but he is not yet ready to be a corpse, either – not like this, at least – so when the crab swipes a heavy claw at him he jerks his body backward. It’s clumsy, and part of it still thuds heavy against his chest. It doesn’t break skin, but he already feels the bruise of it.
The crab moves again, pursuing him. He tries to call for help, but the war-worn soldiers who remain don’t seem to recognize his words, they only stare curiously at the spectacle of it.
Rapt runs back into the carnage of the battlefield. The crab follows, claws still clacking. Rapt moves as quickly as he can, worn by the exhaustion. He is still more nimble than the crab, but he knows he will tire soon, he will have to stop and make some final stand.
(Is that better, then? To stand and face death head on, rather than collapse before it, no longer able to run?)
Every breath is hell. His lungs are burning, the intensity of it strong enough that he imagines he smells smoke. It takes several more strides of this before he realizes it’s not a fantasy, and there is smoke drifting at the edge of the battlefield, the pyre built for dead soldiers. The smallest spark ignites in his mind, and Rapt moves to the smoke. He can see the fire now, smell the stench of smoke and burning flesh, and he makes his final sprint.
He makes it to the pyre and the crab is behind him, chittering louder now. Rapt faces it for a moment, lets its eye lock on him, make a target of him. It charges.
Rapt thinks god, I hope this thing is stupid, and leaps into the pyre.
(Drowning doesn’t always look like drowning. Burning alive always looks like what it is.)
Flames lick over his skin, singeing hair and flesh, and he keeps running, moving through the flames, stumbling over the kindling, the bodies, and he doesn’t look back, he runs, and every step seems to take an hour, and maybe he’s aflame, maybe he’s burning, and he thinks he might give anything to drown.
And then he is out of the flames and there is a scream behind him, the flames eager on the crab’s flesh, catching hold. Rapt’s own blistered skin begins to heal, but in an ebb and flow, the magic still scrabbling to work on him.
But the crab is burning. It emits a horrible, high-pitched noise, an aching noise of unmistakable agony. It is out of the pyre but still burning, still making that horrible scream.
Rapt watches it with a queer fascination. There is a soft thud as its charred body hits the earth. It is quiet, now.
Rapt turns, and begins to walk back to the ocean.
which is to say, I am still dreaming of kissing your claws