Vanguard
The hero's cloak veiled him from the night. He was walking with the same calm dullness you'd expect from a corpse, yet his eyes were flickering with life. He often enjoyed looking at the stars and making shapes out of their formations. Sometimes, he'd even dream of foolishnesses as trifle as reaching up and catching these shining lights in the palm of his hands.
Then he learned of what lied beyond the heavens. It changed him, surely, as it would have any man, that much he knew from the beginning. Well, he didn't care whether he'd break or shatter, his desire was still the same. He simply couldn't stand these millions of lights looking down on him so mockingly, even now he'd look up at the skies, reach up and close his hands as if to reach for something he had lost and forgotten, like a memory.
Vanguard smiled. How foolish, he was still too small. He needed something to make him just a little taller, somewhere to rest his useless feet and jump so high the earth would look like a pebble. Would he keep soaring then, or would his craving crash down along with his body and break once more?
His answer.
Which is exactly what a tall castle was for in the end. It was about time he took a closer look at the fruits of his labor, and perhaps even apologized to him.
He had been quite uncouth as of late, surely one would excuse the wild temperaments of a senile wretch as himself. Ahh, but he wasn't quite the one to blame either, was he? A mere phantom? How laughable, even now the truth would keep stirring his heart as if he was in a storm of emotions, a true roller coaster so to speak of.
"Good grief, the walk hardly seemed this long the last time I took these steps." He laughed as if there was something inherently funny about, to put it bluntly, everything. Settling for a fairly thick portion of the forest, yet brimming with life and warmth, he sighed and let his breath release what seemed like a colossal weight off his shoulders.
He sat in the middle of these trees, these hands of life that reached as desperately for the stars, yet were chained and bound by the earth. These thousands of unfulfilled desires weren't so different from him, he almost pitied them. Surely that couldn't be helped either, for his soul was still far too large, even rotting as it was, and mundane feed did little to sustain it.
He took another breath and circles and letters formed around him, like extensions of his hands reaching out to the forest, ancient words of power long forgotten were grasping at the trees. And then, from the smallest critter to the largest of trees, the lake, the fish, the stone, the dirt and the life surrounding the man of steel slowly began to wither and crumble to grant his sustenance.
