"Can time be broken?" the dragon asks.
And in a great flash of blinding white light, their eternity begins.
"Can time be broken?" the dragon asks.
Caim doesn't answer, shifting his weight as he holds Seere out. The queen beast lies prone beneath them, her pregnant belly swelling rapidly as she gorges on stolen time. Turning his head ever so slightly, Seere smiles up at him.
"Thank you..."
And Caim lets go.
Seere sinks into the light, crashes to the earth. Caim sees him land safely, curling up on the queen's bloated stomach as the time around him begins to slow. The queen's song goes quiet.
"Caim!" the dragon shrieks. It is the first time he has ever heard such terror in her voice. It fills him with a cold that he rather dislikes. He tightens his grip on her neck and draws his sword.
The grotesqueries lunge at them from all sides. They go for the dragon, gripping at her tail and neck with their stubby, featureless fingers. The rip into her flesh with ease, her armored scales useless as she writhes and howls in agony, her wings flapping helplessly as she is held in place and pulled apart.
Caim plummets.
Gore rains down on him as he draws closer to the ground. His flesh is both whole and torn, wrapped untouched around his bones and yet within the jaws of the grotesqueries.
Their hearts are one.
Their pain is one.
His throat useless, his jaw dangles in a soundless scream.
They are both dead before he hits the ground.
"Caim!" the dragon shrieks.
Caim starts, blinking feverishly as if awoken from a dream. He looks around, his surroundings foreign and yet strangely familiar.
Yes. He had been dreaming. He remembers now. He dreamt of falling.
The grotesqueries go for him, this time. His right arm disappears in a red geyser. His breastplate shrieks against a molar the size of his fist. It is an agony unlike any other, and yet he can't help but feel he's experienced it all before.
His head goes into a space that is moist and dark and hot. For the briefest of moments, he is blind.
He is not like the dragon. He is small. A snack.
The ordeal is mercifully short.
"Caim!" the dragon shrieks.
Caim jumps as he comes to, his hot flesh drenched in a chilling cold sweat. His head jerks from side to side as he pants, his jaw flexing uselessly. He swears that his flesh is coated in warm slime. He can feel it slithering down his body. He retches in repulsion.
The dragon beats her wings erratically, her body jerking and flexing beneath him. He falls.
He's dreamt of this before. He's certain of it.
Gore rains down on him from the heavens. The dragon's blood is searingly hot, enough to blister his skin. The sight of freshly spilled blood has brought joy to his heart for as long as he can remember, but the sight of her blood fills him with emotions he had once thought to be nonexistent.
"Caim!"
That voice again. Distant and yet so close.
Tearing.
Screaming.
Again.
… Time?
Numbed by the realization, Caim falls once more.
Could this be... fear?
He suddenly crashes hard against something, the jolt knocking him out of his stupor. He feels his spine break before he actually hears it.
Above him, what is left of the dragon howls. Her back bends and her body folds with a deafening crunch.
Everything after that is pain. He feels the bites in his shoulders and on his chest, but his legs are curiously, blissfully numb.
He wonders if he'll be so lucky next time.
Even though he has finally realized what has happened, Caim's awakens still with a jolt. He grabs onto the dragon's neck, twisting and pushing to force her somewhere, anywhere else, his back cracking lightly.
She snaps and growls in dismay, fighting him. He wants to scream. Surely she knows?
From this sudden new angle, a grotesquerie crashes into the dragon's side, knocking him from her back. In her surprise the dragon releases a burst of flame in a downward arc, singing his flesh and blinding him.
As he tumbles downward and downward in a series of boneless cartwheels, he feels nothing but the agony of fire. Even the dragon goes unnoticed as he falls to his death.
"Caim!" the dragon shrieks.
His flesh is hot, itchy. He can feel bubbles rising up beneath his skin.
"Fools!" she cries, darting rapidly through the cluster of grotesqueries. She pays no heed to her surroundings, so desperate she is to escape. "We were fools! The time! The time!"
In her panic, she crashes into the derelict remains of an Empire skyscraper. The steel and brick crack her skull, but they are not dead. Stunned, she spirals to the ground.
They lay there together, bodies broken and bleeding. Only after some time does everything finally go black.
Caim! Hold on!
Mind fogged with a dizzying headache, Caim can only comply. He presses his face against her neck and closes his eyes, circling his arms around her throat and squeezing as tightly as he can. Her mind is great deal clearer than his. He can feel her powerful muscles flex beneath her warm scales as she weaves through the sky.
There is almost a full minute without pain. Hope warms his abused body. One minute becomes two. Two becomes three. Three becomes four. Caim cannot help but smile into her scales.
She is strong.
Caim frowns.
But she is not tireless.
Her aching muscles scream for oxygen. He tenses, wincing as she groans pitifully.
"No more," she rasps. "No... more of this."
It is almost an hour before the grotesqueries catch up to her. It comes as something of a relief for the both of them.
The dragon tries again. There is a dull ache between Caim's shoulder blades. He opens his eyes and looks down as the city rushes by, the cold air stinging his face. Her rapid wingbeats are deafening.
Something catches his eye. He voices his discovery in their shared mind. The dragon makes a loud pleased, half-crazed sound in her throat. She sails downward towards the buildings, the coos of the grotesqueries left hanging in their wake.
They scramble for the recesses of a hollowed out skyscraper, its shadows just large enough to conceal them. They collapse in the rubble. Caim drops down and pulls himself to his feet, cautiously peeking out. Grotequeries float in the distance. Their soulless eyes dart about, searching.
The dragon hisses, ordering him to move without ever saying a word. He darts back into the shadows as she crawls toward a large chunk of a fallen brick wall. She shoves it against the hole, concealing it further but not quite completely.
And she collapses, panting.
Caim goes over to her despite his screaming muscles. Hesitating, he reaches out to pat her snout.
She recoils with a surprised noise. She stares at him for several long seconds before grudgingly lowering her head. Smirking, he reaches out to stroke her snout once more.
"... You humans," she says with a snort. "Such bizarre displays of affection. Or is affection so foreign to you that this is all you know, Caim?"
He doesn't answer, seating himself next to her and continuing. She grunts, closing her eyes with a heavy exhale.
Caim sits in the dark and listens. Their surroundings are eerily silent. After several long, soundless moments, he crawls over to her side, resting his head against her scales.
She grunts again, her eyelids peeling back. She stares at him for a moment, her eye glowing orange in the darkness.
"Angelus," she says suddenly.
He looks to her questioningly.
"My name is Angelus. You are the first and the last of your kind to know." She considers him for a moment before finally closing her eyes.
He sits in shock, staring blindly into the dark.
"Rest, fool human," she says, making him jump. "Such a trivial matter should not rob you of sleep."
He eventually falls asleep, the first sting of hunger pangs apparent in his belly.
The grotesqueries find them days later. They are tired, hungry, thirsty. They do not fight back.
So many cycles.
Never end.
Never end.
Never end.
Gone.
Never gone.
Watchers.
Crimson blood.
Watchers.
Goddess.
Watchers.
Empire.
Watchers.
Union.
Watchers.
Watching me.
Watching you.
"Caim," Angelus says softly. She lays next to him on the bloated stomach of the queen, her body boneless and bloodied and her eyes dead. Her leathery wing sticks jaggedly out from her body, the bone splintered. She groans, trying to find her voice. "Let us break the pact. Run. Let me die. You are small. You can hide. You can escape."
He doubts that, but hope still prods at his thoughts. He reaches out with the arm that is not broken, stroking her snout tenderly. No, he says. Together.
"Hmph. Humans." Angelus makes a labored, wheezing sound. He believes that it is supposed to be a chuckle. "So needlessly stubborn."
Dragons. So needlessly proud.
She makes that same wheezing sound. It pains him to hear it. She closes her eyes with a sigh.
Caim lifts his head, but not his hand. Seere lies motionless some distance from them, frozen in time. He does not respond to anything they do. They have tried everything.
Caim glares, his heart overtaken by black hatred for the child. He hopes he is aware of everything going on around him. Let him suffer knowing he is unloved and unforgiven for all eternity.
The thought brings a smile to Caim's face. He lowers himself back down, looking up at the sky.
The grotesqueries seem to charge for them in slow motion. Everything seems to be happening more slowly lately. It's almost dreamlike. Even the pain doesn't seem so important anymore.
Caim closes his eyes, smiling. Let them come. Death would not have him. Insanity would not have him.
He was strong.
They were strong.
His body begins to shake. He chokes and gasps, his stomach clenching. Angelus stirs, staring at him with bleary-eyed confusion.
He is laughing.
He is laughing.
Later, all he can recall from that cycle is the agony of his useless throat being torn out.