worthiness

Kaelor paced in his chambers. Back and forth, his boots clicking on the cold stone floor, a brittle rhythm that barely kept his thoughts from spiraling out of control.

He was here. One of the chosen. Down in the dungeons, dragged in quietly with barely a fight. Kaelor had left a few of his guards while he went to his lord’s chambers to report his success.

Kaelor should be thinking of strategy now. He should be downstairs, interrogating the prisoner. But instead, he was thinking of his Lord. Always of his Lord.

His masked face, bathed in lantern-light as Kaelor reported the prisoner’s capture and subsequent arrival. The way his gloved fist clenched, the relieved way his lord told him that he did a good job. The way his Lord focused so deeply, so passionately, on Rhaizan, the way he ordered Kaelor to capture the man in the same breath he said that he wanted him.

Kaelor paused, breathing heavily. 

Him? His mind cried out, rage and confusion boiling beneath his skin. Why HIM?

To his horror, magic congealed in a pool of nearby light, rising up and forming a projection of the prisoner. Rhaizan, before Kaelor had victoriously taken him prisoner. A projection that showed him standing tall and proud, sword at his side.

Kaelor fisted a hand in his hair and snarled at the projection. Its surface rippled like smoke caught in crystal as his intent for it to disappear washed over its incorporeal body.

It did not move.

Kaelor stared at it.

And then it spoke.

“You think you deserve him?” the projection sneered. “I’ve been destined to take him away from you and still he fawns over me.”

Kaelor’s face twisted in hate, residual magic pulsing in his fingertips, sharp and flickering. The projection wavered in response, but it still did not vanish.

“You think yourself worthy enough to kiss even the dirt on his boots?” the projection continued cruelly, puffing his chest out proudly and resting his blade on a padded shoulder. “You are wrong.”

Furious tears pricked at Kaelor’s eyes, his magic twisting painfully in his gut. He tried to wrest his emotions under control, to calm his rage. He was better than this. He knew how to control himself.

The projection smirked in the face of his struggle. So smug, so sure, so confident.

“You’re not real.” Kaelor hated the tremble in his voice. How weak he sounded, how uncertain. His hands gripped his hair tighter, fingers trembling with the force of magic in his body, pushing for release, for a way out. He bowed his head, dark black locks cascading in front of his face and shielding him from the projection before him.

“You are not REAL.” He repeated, squeezing his eyes shut.

The projection laughs, low and thrumming with malice. “Oh, but I am. I’m down in the dungeons, aren’t I? Who knows, maybe your master is there with me. Stars know it would be more time than he would want to spend with you.”

Kaelor’s hand twitched with pain. “Why you?” he whispered. “What do you have that I don’t?”

Everything went wrong because of Rhaizan. His Lord withdrew into himself, started to wear his mask and armor more and more. He focused on finding Rhaizan to an obsessive extent, even leaving most of the strategizing and planning for the war to Kaelor while he locked himself away for days at a time.

And Kaelor obeyed him. How could he not?

Lord Nocre was everything to him. Everything and more. Kaelor was his blade, his general. How could he not want to obey, to follow, to love?

Kaelor opened his eyes and slowly raised his head.

“You think you deserve him?” the projection laughed, gliding closer to him. “He would never love you back, would never want to love you back. you are nothing, you are worthless, you ar—“

The projection cut off with a choked noise. 

All the sounds in the room muted.

Kaelor slowly, carefully untangled his hands from his hair. A high pitched whine built in volume as he lifted a single finger.

The projection gasped soundlessly and tried to turn, but Kaelor was faster.

A tendril of magic shot out from his finger and hit the projection in the chest. A violet-red glow enveloped it, cracks appearing throughout its smoky form. It screamed silently and burst from the inside out.

Kaelor exhaled, quiet and empty.

He rose and straightened his robes, ambient noise fading back into existence as he reigns in his magical aura. It curled up quietly within him again as he turned toward the door with a flat expression, betraying none of the anguish he felt just moments before.

Well. Time to check on the prisoner.