The boy limped back home. His heart was weighed heavy by grief, loss, but disbelief plagued him more.

With disordered steps he walked through the door and with powerless hands he dropped his mother's trident down to the ground. Even now he wanted to wake up and learn that all of this had just been a bad dream, another damn nightmare. Nothing of that sort happened, nothing consoled him, the longer he stood there the more he was forced to realise that this was reality.

The boy took a few steps forward and then fell to his knees. He had crawled through water and mud, he had been exhausted emotionally and mentally long before that. His body was in great pain as Ash permeated throughout it and fused into his being. He could not help but fall unconscious onto the floor after it all.

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Out in the desert sands lay Fafnir, who had collapsed upon the ground. The battle against the thirty silver knights had left even he, the greatest of beasts, exhausted beyond measure.

Naturally, if this had happened to a dragon then it went without saying that its rider and master was not much better off either. General Avance was in such a poor state that he was compelled to lean his back powerlessly against the dragon's slumbering body.

All around them lay the remains of those silver knights whether they be broken corpses or ash upon the wind. The general opened his eyes only once and faced the Sanctuary to the north. Something inside his heart ached more than his wounds. He wanted to quickly rise up and be on his way but exhaustion quickly came to claim him. He entrusted all of his weight against the dragon's body. He did not know when next his eyes would have the strength to open. The skies blackened, a shadow loomed over the unconscious duo of man and beast, a pair of eyes but briefly beheld them, as if in pondering.

___________________________

The light of day shone through the wooden walls and ceiling by the time the boy raised his tired head from the cold, hard floor. Rapture sat up with a dazed and miserable expression. He peered forward, disturbed by an odor, to find the table covered in empty bottles of wine. Yes, it ws the foul smell of alcohol that had offended his senses so.

He turned his gaze towards the sofa where now there lay a woman clad in flesh coloured clothes. She was someone he knew well, she was his mother's strange friend, Amelia of Venus. That woman's gaze was set upon the unmoving ceiling, her cheeks flushed red and her expression masked in sorrow.

"Mistress..." She muttered, "I guess there's no point now...you're gone...aren't you?...Mistress." Rapture stood up and stroked his own dishevelled hair to free the dried mud and green grass that had become lodged therein. The woman noticed him then, she sat up and called out to him.

"Master...Rapture?...I remember...Mistress Beatrix said I am to take you to Venus City." The woman tried to stand, but it was a pitiful display. The boy could not bear to watch any longer so he reached out to her and pressed her shoulders back down onto the sofa.

"I'll get you some water," He said.

"But...Mistress said."

"It's fine," Said the boy, "we have time yet." There was much to be done, one look at the room told a thousand stories. He had to run a bath, change his clothes, clean up the floor, make something to eat and patch up that hole he'd made in the wall last night. His mind was still disordered and chaotic, he raised his hand and combed it through his hair again before setting about these varied tasks.

Routine was important to him, it could help focus the mind, he knew this and put it swiftly into practice. His mind was rested and now he put it to purpose, before days end he had grasped himself again.

____________________________

The drawbridge fell with a loud snap. Two pairs of boots, one a young boys and the other a mature woman's, caused it to bend and creek as they walked across its surface.

Rapture set foot upon the muddy lakeside. He raised his head and breathed in the cool air. The destruction of the night before remained clear to his eyes. None of the animals, be they beasts or birds, had yet returned. He turned his gaze towards the spot where the god, Rognir, had appeared. Could he have done something to talk his mother out of it? Now he'd never know.

He focused his gaze upon the spot where he had surfaced from the lake. The destruction that he had wrought with the power gifted him remained there clear as day, the agony he felt back then rushed back and tightened around his chest like a savage vice.

Finally he glanced back towards the home he'd known for all his life. The wooden decking he'd wrecked, the wooden wall he'd poorly patched up, that was a house built by hand, his mother's hand. Every nook and cranny was either her handiwork or his own, a lifetime was etched into those walls. Now he was going to leave this place, and everything he had ever known, behind.

All of this had befallen him so quickly that even now he did not know how he should cope with it. All he could do was move on, but when is that ever easy? The greatest injustice in this world lay in this, in the tragic things that he, as a lowly man, cannot change. Death and downfall, misery and regret, if this world had true gods then they were the greatest of sadists for letting these cruelties go on. He hated them, those so called Gods, and Rognir in particular.

"Goodbye, mother." Rapture said as he turned away from his lakebound home. He knew not what life held for him beyond this place, beyond the sanctuary's protective walls, only that he could not stay here, he could not bear to.

Amelia watched the boy's back the whole length of the way. She was silent, her thoughts a mystery, or perhaps she was still just nursing a hangover and a chest full of misery?