violence
They are in the same in their powers, that they are both beset with the ability to make the dead walk. But the similarities end there, for he has lived a life devoted to kings and kingdoms, and she has been devoted only to herself and her whims.
And here – only she is smiling.
She is smiling because the carelessness radiates from him, the weakness, and because she is a hungry, savage thing who feasts upon such weakness.
She is cautious, though, when she creeps at the corners of his mind. This power is nowhere near as honed as her necromancy, an unwilling subject would easily toss her out, punish her for such a violation. It is why she is careful to talk her way in, or otherwise find horses who are so desperate to forget or to change that they let her in, the way a vampire is invited across a threshold.
She feels a sense of something giving, and then she is more fully in his mind, enough to hear his voice, echoing faintly, as if shouted down a long corridor.
You can’t bring back the past, he says.
No, she replies, but I can make you forget. Or…
She hesitates, before speaking again, an even bolder lie.
You know I’m powerful, she says, I could change things for you. Take you back to those days, to the chamber’s beating heart.
She has no such powers, of course, couldn’t even trick his mind into such things if she wanted to. But she is a good liar, an easy one. She has no real concrete plan as she rifles through what scraps of memory he lets her to.
Here, she says, as she lands upon a name, this Offspring. Let me take control, just for now. We’ll go visit him. See if he wants to come with us. It could be glorious again, Nymph. You could be glorious again. Let me show you.
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
