1. Venator

As I skulked past the gates
And drew behind the stones
The winding trees enveloped
The cloak around my bones

Peering through the night's mist
I crept through the fen
To try and find the totem
In the grey warg's den

The freezing forest guards
The secrets that he wrought
His spirit lies on every twig
His scent infests the haunt

His howling cut the still air
His cry up to the stars
The piercing bay of his rage
Tore the beat out of my heart

To the entrance
I stalked up in the shadows
His breathing I could hear
Rasping in the barrows

Silently my dagger slid
From its ice-cracked sheath
His bloody maw emerging
His jowls hung raw beneath

Like those that lusted below me
My mind was always snared
The totem drew my senses
The grey warg drew my fear

His giblet eyes surveyed me
His haggard haunch was raised
Rearing up his splintered paw
He struck me in a daze

2. From Scythe To Sceptre

I knew you some years before
Deep in prayer under bough
Futile sighs in vital skin
Your flesh caressed by night

Yet change came quickly
A bruise in the air, it staggered within
Sweet sickly rot
Black wound infection

King, slave, child
Your fates are united
An unending row to the grave
A single dance now, all eyes are shut
Blind to the earthly

Begging now to forget who I am
Emperor, your sword is useless
Shattered crowns so swiftly
Fragile as the scythe

Aching bones cling to swollen limbs
Despair floods all senses
The world is dying around me

Gaping in mirth, his old eyes spoke
Where you are now – I once was
And what I am now – you soon will be
Nothingness awaits you

Begging now to regain what I've lost
The tale of life is but a picture
A flash in an abyss, a dream in the void

See that there is no meaning,
Understand eternal death
You long now to try what you once feared
But the time is gone and dust will be your legacy

3. Outlive The Hand

In death she spoke of waiting
Her final days were long
These fields have changed since last she wept
Before the silent throng

She sits where childhood memories lie
Above, beside, within them
The carvings have outlived the hand
Which bled to first begin them

As features of the landscape merge
The oldest trees are falling
Awareness sweeps the view aside
She stares as if recalling

Seen first beyond the canopy
They soon had reached the borders
The clouds infused with burning breath
Arrived from coldest corners

The windswept valley hastens now
As dying words are uttered
From lips of earth and sapling's strain
Like leaves, her last thoughts fluttered

Again it darkens overhead
The knowledge of it stills me
And when the water starts to fall
Preserve the drop that kills me

4. Sun's Delusion

Descending through thickened mist
An old man reached inside and tore out my slumber
Ivory twists an open claw
Set upon the skulls of man

Formative years aside
Truth blanched in sun's delusion
But providence affirmed
Destroyed my aberration
Mortal seeds in divine
Gave grief into life's form

And so curved the spine
Obeisance made before him
Blessed in life but truly cursed by death
Bitter choice befalls you
Glory, lord of men, asks but pain

Master's stone was weaved
Compelled before the throne
Then war came, a semblance of her
Lands unite and he prospers

Grand signs assail me
Temptation yields assent
As irons carve the sand
A ruse brings fate upon him
Anguished price for laurels
Veins burnt by hatred,
In premonitions menis consumed me

Unsanctified, I cared nothing for their ways
Yet a father's plea dragged mercy from me

Now, demi-god, echo in eternity
A toxic toll pierces the flaw
On reflection, there was never any choice

5. Held In Hollows

Through tainted mass
A scourge unseen
Brought three winters forth
And set between

After these hundreds of years
The embers and fate will collide
Her rotten heart has burst
And shattered through dead wood

When they drank from the earth, the end was near
Tracing paths that once ran alone and pure
Suffused within, the blighted decay
Now snapped into dust, their splinters fall

But a tithe to the wind, his frail grasps
Clawed for the moon then came undone
When all hope fails in the last broken bough
Her strength will be gone

Churning ash and husks in the bitter winds
Crack the earth and burn the sky
A wry procession of hubris
Where nothing remains

But everything changes...
In destruction she will create

Arising in glory, the searing gaze
Crimson-handed specter of death
Under the blood eye of furies
Bury their feeble hearts

6. Husks

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7. Aspect

Name the aspect of oblivion
That instilled in you such dread
In the moment that was waiting
Where the causal chain had led

Describe the pure finality
Of that twisted, cold eruption
And attempt to comprehend
Unparalleled destruction

Unclench your teeth and meet your demise
Behold the fate you always desired

Standing on the brink, we see our home is lost
A sacrifice led to the slaughter
Black flickers grit the cusp
Hands clasped under falling soil

Drip down faintly by dark whispers
A torrent into madness

Blunt nails shred the life from your face
Fetid strips of decaying hope
Drift down gently

In obsidian water
Your pale arms reach for me
Beckon me closer

In silence at last
A peace we always wanted
We cease to be

8. Countless Skies

Countless times below me
Rivers rose and fell
Ageless stones eroding out
Across the endless swell

Songs to pave the seasons
Wounds to follow birth
Cries to carry through the night
Wombs to feed the earth

Countless skies above me
Each unlike the next
Lines of more than moon and sun
Glimpses of a text

Countless hands have sought me
Reaching out in vain
Permanence observes without
Compassion or disdain

Flames to greet the harvest
Storms to face in awe
Winds to weave through every wood
Walls to dull the road

Purpose lost to frailty
Craning blades of grass
Strength and weakness on and on
All that is will pass

Countless hands have sought me
Reaching out in vain
Permanence observes without
Compassion or disdain

Flames to greet the harvest
Storms to face in awe
Winds to weave through every wood
Walls to dull the road

Countless waves around me
Strong until the last
Leaning into dimming dreams
All that was has passed