Just a random thing that appeared in my head while at work (God, if this is what my mind skips to when I'm zoning, I should consult a therapist). This is pretty much my debut on the Elsword fanfic. Please take good care of me, give advice, review, and all that bull. If you don't happen to get it through the story (which means I REALLY failed), it's a Crimson Avenger!

I Wander

I wander, passing from place to place, looking wearily at the war-torn landscape of Feita.

I do not think; rather, I do not want to think. The voices - they're still there, and they hound me every step of my way. I found shutting my thought processes helps with the voices. They're only whispers, not the screams that once tormented me.

The other way was far more effective, yet the chances were increasingly rare, and it only lasted for a sweet instance.

I continue to wander, letting my feet take me where they wish to go. I will find the destination eventually.

The voices whisper to me. Blood. Kill. DIE.

In the distance. I turn my head toward the noise. This sound... I remember it well. The dull clang of steel, shouting and roars, the twang of a bowstring, and I catch the acrid scent of magic residue.

There is a battle.

I run toward the source, dearly hoping it was so. The thought makes me smile until my face aches. The cure, the remedy. It was so close, so tantalizingly close. Over the hill I run. On the top, I stop.

A battle between humans and demons. I cut the palm of my right hand, feeling the sticky blood drip between my fingers. How many times have I done this, I wonder. A thick scar crosses my palm, a testament to this ritual and habit.

Without hesitation, I leap into the middle of the demon formation. All around me stare in confusion at the figure that boldly jumped into their midst. That was fine by me.

It gave me more than enough time to eviscerate a dozen of them.

The voices stopped.

It seems they've finally recovered from the shock. I hear a commander bark out orders as the others scrambled into formation.

Oh, how I love their screams.

Their shields mattered not. I crushed them with my blood-empowered swings.

Oh, how I love their eyes of despair.

They aimed their spears at me. I dodged them as easily as I dodged their soaring heads and spraying blood.

When they know what they do is futile...

They nocked their arrows. I ran them through - as if I'd give them the chance.

...Only then will they know what my mission is.

The commander realizes he's alone, the sole survivor of a massacre. He raises his sword and yells in defiance. I can hear the trembling of his voice. I can hear his fear.

This is what I live for.

Almost as soon as I'm done swinging his blood off my claymore, I can hear a rumble. I turn to see an army of glitters and golems marching toward me, gargoyles covering the sky. How they surprised me matters not. What matters is how familiar this scene was to the scene that scars my memory.

The voices returned. Spill their blood. Kill them all. THEY MUST DIE!

I clutch my head, both in surprise and fear. Never had this happened before; never have the voices come in combat. I cannot let them win. This is my only solace. I'll be damned if you take it away from me.

I return to reality. I look at the army of hundreds and before me and do the only thing I could do.

I charged.

Kill... Butcher... Destroy... Torment!

I've never felt so alive. Every spell sapped my strength till my knees buckled, but every flurry of blades restored my fortitude. I danced in their ranks, as I shifted from a swift angel of death on the desolate wind to an unstoppable demon of destruction, crushing through their ranks.

My blade is empowered by my blood. It cleaves through their weapons and armor as easily as it cleaves through flesh.

My very shadow helps me fight, filling the enemy with fear as I stab the cowardice out of their eyes.

I hurl a saw blade of black blood, noting with satisfaction as it bisects everything it passes through.

I struggle to breathe. There's so much blood, dust, and gore in the air. I have to take care not to accidentally swallow.

Adrenaline courses through me. Oh yes, this was worth the wait. The most satisfying battle in weeks! I see how they tremble as they confront me. I watch their fake courage fade as they realize they are the last in their group standing.

I could not stop smiling.

I feel their weapons hit me from time to time. I do not care. Their deaths are all I seek, and in their death, I find the strength to fight on. I pay no heed to arrows in my body. I pay no attention to the gashes from their blades. Those will heal in time. I can only slow the festering in my mind.

In the back, I hear the humans shouting as they attempted to help me.

THEY ARE MY PREY. YOU WILL NOT GET TO THEM FIRST!

With all my will, all my strength, I call forth as much blood as I can afford to empower my blade. The direction that my blade points turns dark as black explosions rupture through space. I can see it. Through this black void is my Sword of Fate. The fate that I had embraced so long ago. The fate that I now reject with all my heart.

I reach for the Sword. With one slash, the explosions branch into life-seeking thorns, hungrily seeking for the lives of the demons before me. As I watch them impale themselves into flesh and stone, the line where I slashed darkens the world.

I will kill them all.

In that dark, the voices stopped again.

When the world came to, every demon was gone.

I laugh. I laugh and I laugh and I cannot stop laughing. In the back of my head, it sounds like an insane person's cackle. But it feels sooooo good...

Their shattered corpses rest by my feet.

A wave of dizziness hits me. Every battle. I fall to my knees as I struggle to stay conscious. The toll of blood never got any lighter, and every experience was never more pleasant.

It didn't matter. The demons were dead, and the voices had stopped.

I hear voices. Not those voices. Human voices. I turn to look at who was speaking. It's been so long since I heard human speech that I don't know what they're saying.

There's a small group a few feet away, weapons drawn and at the ready. They are obviously seasoned warriors, despite how they look; only the foolish lower their weapons in a battlefield. Besides, I must be a sight to see, with this blood covering me from head to toe. I see a purple-haired girl, dressed in a white uniform and an iceball at the ready. A mage. One of my comra-

NO. DO NOT REMEMBER.

I shift my gaze to the others. An elven archer. A man with a mechanical arm. A girl with two servants in front of her, standing guard. Someone in white armor, cannon pointed at me. A spearwoman with fox tails. Some boy with six things floating near him. These people mattered not. They were nothing to me.

The red-haired boy though... Why does he look at me like that?

He stares at me, blank look of shock on his face. He resembles the knights of Velder, with his armor, his stance, and his bearing. I can't help but feel some sort of faint... pride...?

I could not remember. I DIDN'T WANT TO REMEMBER.

So I did the only thing I could; I stared back. We stood there, looking at each other's eyes for several minutes. The boy breaks the ice by saying one word, a one-worded question that causes the others to lower their weapons.

"Elesis?"

How long has it been since I heard my name? The last people who called me by that name were my comrades, my comrades who-

She lay on the ground, bleeding from her leg that folded in the opposite direction. She could only watch helplessly as the people she worked with for so long were slowly killed off by the ambushing demons, one by one. They had just finished their mission; they were supposed to make it back safely. No one expected this carnage, and it resulted in their demise. She lay there, drowning in the screams of those close to her, cursing the growls and roars of those who took their lives, cursing her powerlessness to change anything.

She lay there far after the battle was over, desperately clinging to life as the darkness approached from the corner of her vision. She remembered and reached into her pocket. The very thing that they worked so hard to take could be her salvation - Amethyst's crystal. She knew what could happen, the price she might pay. It didn't matter. Someone had to live on. They had to carry their last words, their wishes and dreams, their regrets. Most importantly, someone had to exact vengeance. Bloody vengeance. She let the energy of the crystal flow through her...

I clutch my head and involuntarily groan in torment. The reasons I fought, the reason I chose to live... what did it matter? I had to get out of here. Too many painful thoughts. I needed to escape from the torment.

So I walked away.

They called for me, tried to get me to stop. The red-haired boy even grabbed my shoulder, desperation with his pleas. I could only glare at him. How dare he try to keep me from my solace?! I had a mission to do. Exact bloody vengeance on those demons.

They shouldn't have messed with me. They shouldn't have messed with me. Theyshouldnthavemessedwithmetheyshouldnthavemessedwithmetheyshouldnthavemessedwith...

I shrugged off his hand and continued. They did not stop me again. I felt their gaze as they watched me walk over the ruins and the corpses of the slain demons.

I did not look back, and I no longer felt their stares.

The voices returned, a little louder than before. Blood. Want. NEED!

What do I have to do to satisfy you all, I screamed in my mind. How many more must I butcher to sate your bloodthirst?

I want more. I... NEED... MORE.

It mattered not. The demons' screams were music, the din of their dying a beautiful symphony to my ears. The feeling when my blade pierces through their flesh, the satisfaction when I crack their skull and bones. I conquer their strong, trample their weak. Their blood will sate my thirst, their flesh my hunger. As long as a single demon still draws breath, I will not stop hunting. I will not stop killing.

The voices dimmed. Kill...

I wander, the voices my only company.

The waiting - it eats at my mind...

I hope for the next battle.

Part of me wants to make a series of these for every character, every job path, instead of this being a lonely oneshot. Tell me what you think, and depending on responses, I'll change the title and yada yada to make this a compilation.

1/11/2015: Gonna make this a compilation of what I think is the "darkest path" that each character can choose. You might disagree, but I'll try to MAKE it dark ufufufu...