Live, Love, and Hate – by Orpheus

 

Week 33 – Descent into the Labyrinth

 

(10/8/04) He never thought he would, or at least hadn’t thought so for the last few months, but he wanted to hear the voice of his Shadow again. He wanted the comfort that came from the darker half of his mind given its own sentience. She’d been silent for far too long. Despite that, however, it was almost as though she’d been there two cycles of the Tide ago, in that way that one watches over an ex-lover who they still care for, but don’t want to face because it might be painful.

 

But maybe, Orpheus supposed, I am but her Shadow. That would explain why she is the one who always seems to be so much more accepting, so much less demanding, so much more vivid, so much more………human. He stuck his feet down into the Nihil, submerging his body bit by bit to the ravaging cold of the Tempest. Once his feet were through, he dipped himself in up to the waist, then his shoulders, and finally took the plunge to the other side.

 

When he found that none of the Shadow-Eaten were awaiting him on the other side, Orpheus counted himself as lucky (my apologies to anyone who is trying to apply the symbolism from the Oblivion to this piece, as it has changed, though the set up behind the story hasn’t). Though, what made him even luckier than that was that he found himself standing right before the Venous Star.

 

Orpheus grunted with exertion as he pushed the vein-ridden rock to the side and took his first steps down into the Labyrinth. He heard the cries of those who’d given in to their shadows all around him they screamed the fathomless, unknowable scream of the mad. The stairs grew broader and broader as he neared the bottom, until at last he stood before the very gate of the Labyrinth itself. “A distant shadow filtered through my mind,” he whispered.

 

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