Shattered Suns

What have I done? (NoiseNoiseNoiseNoiseNoiseNoise) Fear.How.Mothers.Did.Sadness.It.Fathers.Come.Hate.To.Children.This.Sorrow.Forgive.Displeasure.Me. (Chaos—Lubrae convulses. The sky shatters.) This was the cost of justice? (An enclosed cell.…

—-And what more of this family of yours?—- They're gone. Dead. All of them. They don't matter anymore. —-Is that so?—- What do you even want to know? You want to know more about my father, the Lubraean traitor? Or perhaps my mother, another Lubraean…

(We survive. We give back to the land. We help those in need. They come for us anyway.) (The Regime raids our camp. No logical explanation for those they kill. Clan-mothers. Clan-fathers. Children. They kill us without purpose. A red spattering courtesy of a…

(Father… it's been a year since you were taken. But we have not been attacked since. I know the Stalkers still watch the clan, but I survive alone these days—ousted for being the only one brave enough to act. A liability, they called me.) (We will see what…

—-The Regime took all that mattered to you… and yet, you blamed your father?—- The Regime never lied about who they were. They were brutal, yes. But honest. —-Honesty meant something to you?—- It meant everything. —-Interesting. And so, in the face of…

Stop. —-Why?—- I don't want to do this. I don't want to relive this. —-Most would die for the opportunity to retread their greatest moments.—- …Great moments end in triumph, not mass extinction. In the end, what mattered? —-The end? No, no. We are so…

—-Your father, he feared your anger. Feared you.—- Because he knew what I could become. He knew what burdens flowed through my veins. He too felt them, lived them. (I am a boy. My father skewers three Stalkers in front of me. His eyes are crimson, his…

(The Abyss. The artificial crack in Lubrae, separating the desired from the undesired. A crevice devoid of all but a strand of concrete to connect the halves.) (There, amongst the brush that conceals those approaching, I find them. Trembling, unsure of what…

I should have died. —-And yet, it was there in the darkness of the Abyss that you became truly alive.—- (I lie amongst swamp and rock and ruin. The Abyss is not unending after all. The wrathful sounds of unchecked nature draw close. Down here, it is dark.…

I know what happened next. I do not need to see it again. (I rend Mother's flesh.) Do you not hear me?! (I remove Father's head from his neck.) This is madness! (None escape my wrath. Not even the little ones. Not even civilians. The city watches in…