II

...You go down to the Valley and I'll rise up to meet you.
Though if you stray from the path I swear I'll beat you,
But if you do as I say then I will make you the prince of the world.
You can reign as you like, and no one will challenge you.
Countries will crumble if it's what you want them to do.
If you do as I say then I promise all this will unfurl....

Though no dreams visited me that night, I awoke with that infernal lullaby stuck in my head. I couldn't help but wonder what kind of sadist my mother truly was, to have sung that to me as a mere child. I remember her face only vaguely, her mask of solemn obedience obscuring the hatred brewing inside her. I realized then that she was as evil as the man I was chasing, another angel who'd lost her mind, and the traps she'd set for me were deadlier than his.
Her traps were those of insanity. In that desert, after weeks (months? years?) of constant thirst and bleaching sun (oh how I hated that beautiful phosphorescent desert sun) I was losing my mind. So inebriated with my own dying logic, I hardly noticed the large black edifice slowly encroaching.
When I got closer, I knew it was him. It was no building; it was the man I sought. I stopped, unable to believe that after these weeks (months? years? centuries?) of chasing him through the desert, here he was, and he had the upper hand. I stared up at the sun, smiled at it, and it smiled back at me with a grin of a thousand daggers. Stabbing piercing pain drove through every part of my eyes, my head, my body.
I fell.
And fell...
And fell...



I don't think I ever hit the ground.