Finn, having completed his final quest, was walking through one of the many halls of a dungeon he had just cleared of undead, a soft crunch following every step he made as bone crumbled under his boots as he waded effortlessly through the swamp of mist that lay at his feet and seemed to permeate the air with the stench of death. Their bones now free of the chains of reanimation, the skeleton puppets had clattered to the ground upon their master, a necromancer of unparalleled renown, being run through with Finn's blade. His quests having taken a whole three years, was finally over,. It was the ultimate relief to know that he could finally return home to the waiting arms of the first girl to give wholly to him what he would be willing to give for anyone he loved.
On departure of his homeland 3 years ago he had plans of being gone a year and no more, but his desire to perfect his project would force him to seek further and further into the paradise of ruin that was Ooo. The mission he'd never received a contract for, find a gift for Marceline, more specifically... an Engagement Ring.
It had been two years, a month and four days since they'd last spoken as his communicator had failed to pick up any signals once he was too far away, three years of gruelling searching, sleeping rough and slaying his way through everything and anything that would try stop him. But now? now it was all worth it, Finn could give to her the gift and the smile that both blessed Finn's dreams and plagued his days without her, would be completely worth it. all of it, the tough and the rough and the tougher would all fall away in the shadow of the radiant smile Finn yearned and lived for. If this wasn't love, Finn would have no idea what was. Marceline and Finn had been together for a lengthy period by then and this was attested to by Marceline who said to Finn one night they were together that the time they had spent together had been the best of her eternally gray, sunless life. it had been such a click reaction that only after almost two years of her cold embrace filled with so much warmth he would claim to anyone oblivious enough to ask that "she's the one".
It had taken almost three whole hours to clear the dungeon and another hour to make his way out, this was on top of the week and a half he'd spent tracking it down in the middle of the Leafshaker woods. The winding corridors and dead ends had been making navigation a nightmare. The cold stone half pipe tunnelling looked the same no matter where you were, and due to Finn's lack of a map he was sorely regretting that fact. the dark seemed to swallow his sense of direction and he felt as if he was to be consumed by the fog circling at his feet, clawing up his legs to suffocate him. Not panicking as best he could, Finn saw light glittering off the cobwebs at the approaching corner and burst through some shrubbery to find himself at the entrance to the dark caves. Having reached the entrance of the dungeon again, Finn, seeing it was already night, made the execute decision to take a quick rest and set up camp. After setting up a quick ward he had had the fortune of learning from passing wizards a while ago on his journey.
The ward worked to cleverly disguise the area within which Finn would camp so as to not be caught without being prepared for combat. As the dungeon itself was located deep within one of Ooo's many dark and very magical forests, which still have the odd creature lurking about with some kind of evil intent, Finn had about two and a half hours of extremely welcome sleep before naturally waking up, removing the ward and continuing out of the forest with little to no trouble from woodland inhabitants, all them knowing full well his combat ability. In the few years he had spent in his teens truly dedicating himself to improving himself Finn had really flipped his priorities, whereas the younger Finn would have been focusing more on searching for love and a girlfriend, it was around the age of fifteen that Finn had realised how foolish he had been and started taking his duties extremely seriously, spending day after day training his physical, mental and recently, even magical capabilities.
All this training had rendered Finn something to be feared, his toned form showed through most of his relatively light apparel and a stare alone would emenate an air of intimidation thick enough to choke you, but not literally. However it had come with a price. Finn had been so focused on bettering himself he had shut all of his friends out of his life and became something of a recluse, which is why it came as such a surprise to everyone when Finn suddenly asked Marceline to go out on a date with him and even more of a shock when Marceline had said yes. Finn had later explained to Marceline that it wasn't really a date and that he was just lonely and he felt uncomfortable asking anyone else to hang out because he barely knew anyone anymore, however this didn't stop the rumours of them being together and doing this and that with each other from spreading.
Finn and Marceline had gradually been getting closer and they could both feel it, Finn however, was hesitant as his previous attempts at love and a relationship had gone sourly, first being Bubblegum, his love being unanswered or reciprocated for all those years and the second being Flame Princess, however much they tried it would never work out and after a certain incident leading to Finn being at a terminal state she had decided to shut him out of her life for good and while it hurt her more than she would ever let on, she had known deep in her heart it was for the best. Finn as expected though did not take this well at all and this is what had led on to him becoming focused on ignoring girls altogether and focusing on bettering himself, while initially Finn's friends had come over to try and console him, all it accomplished was to make him more determined to shut everyone out, he saw the people trying to help him as if they were pitying him, which infuriated him, not so much at the others but more so at himself. Seeing this, Jake had told everyone to "let Finn do his thing, he'll get over it eventually.".
After that followed four years of nothing but training, slaying, training and sleeping. It was almost as if Finn had become a robot, he woke up at five every morning and began exercises, his once small runs became a full sprint to the Candy Kingdom, just to check if anything needed doing, and then a jog almost encompassing an entire half of OOO, not only had this burnt off all of his childish flab, leaving him with a rocking six pack, but in this time he had also cast of his outer childish shell. He had begun studying and researching all things from history to battle tactics, science to magic. Finn had become very well learned, not enough to rival Princess Bubblegum but enough that she would have to admit that he had become very intelligent, not only that but in those short few years, Finn had grown handsome, very handsome. so much so to the point that the amount of times he was asked out to a kingdom with the pretence of danger, just for it to turn out to be some kind of date had practically tripled, Finn now kept his hair shoulder length and didn't really style it save for the occasional smart event when he would simply comb it over.
After a long, long walk back to the entrance of Marceline's cave, Finn steeled himself. He had almost lost his nerve before he had quite literally, punched himself across the face, Finn often uses this before a big fight to brace himself but also to clear his head, when his fist collides with his face he imagines all his worries being knocked outside his head, stupid? Sure, but it worked. Finn held his bag, replaced with a messenger bag with metal plates adorned by golden swirls fastened onto the sides, found towards the beginning of the end of Finn's change, tightly to his side as he climbed to the ridge of the cave, his heart thundering in his chest with every step he took, Finn made his way to the door. That was the moment he realised something was off, there were claw marks all over the walls inside the house, and that's when Finn noticed that there was no door, it had been torn off its hinges and was lying discarded in the corner of the cave. A lump formed in his throat. He couldn't breathe. What if something had happened!, while he wasn't there?! Finn knew Marceline was more than capable but if she'd even been scratched, Finn knew he'd never forgive himself! The house inside the cave was in tatters. Finn leaped into the house, towards the ladder leading up to the first floor flying over the torn, broken furniture on the floor like the wind itself, he literally jumped onto the ladder and began furiously climbing. As Finn poked his head through the opening on the floor of the first floor, a noise he hadn't noticed, stopped.
A gentle thudding on the walls in Marceline's room. As Finn brought his feet up through the hole and slowly turned to face the room. He stopped dead. His heart did the same, missing much more than just one beat. His blood was ice, yet rushed through his veins with the passion and vigor of a thousand suns. Lying on the queen sized bed in the centre back of the room was Ash. Underneath him, to Finn's utter horror, was Marceline. He staggered and fell onto his back still staring at the two as tears began to well up in his eyes. Marceline couldn't say a word, she hadn't known when Finn was going to be home and had been too caught up in her 'diversions' to notice Finn's scent.
"I..I..." was all she could force out, while Ash however was smirking to himself, seeing the utter destruction of this hero, written all over his face, had brought him more pleasure than he ever could have gotten from Marceline. His smirking had lasted a whole of eight seconds before the broken hero was upon him. Finn's face was hidden because he never once looked up and also because the only light in the room was coming from a small lamp that had been knocked over into the corner of the room, but even without good visibility anyone could have sworn Finn had disappeared before he was besides the bed in an instant, pulling Ash and throwing against a wall on the other side of the room, Ash would have stood however he had been thrown against the wall with such force it had cracked, both the wall and his right leg. Any emotion besides rage now a distant memory, Finn made an effort to walk slowly towards the crippled, whimpering mess. Marceline watched on, paralysed with fear, a genuine fear that went through her entire body, something she hadn't felt in more than a hundred years. Finn had summoned a glowing, gold long sword, the blade itself just ordinary silver except for the middle of the blade where some strange symbols were glowing red, it's handle made of pure gold, it had ornate patterns of dancing blue leading down towards its pommel where a red sphere, clearly some kind of gem, was pulsing.
As Finn raised his sword to strike Ash, the gem and the symbols on the blade shone blue for a second, then back to red, then blue again, to red. Blue, red, blue. Finally the flashing stopped and the blade was left on blue, the truth was that the blade showed the wielder's emotions and the fact that it was going from red to blue meant that Finn was conflicted, the red being his rage and the blue being his sadness. Finn took one last look back towards Marceline who flinched at his expression, he opened his mouth to say something... but nothing came out, what was there to be said? the final betrayal ripped Finn's heart in two and Marceline could see it. Finn left swiftly and silently through the hole in the floor, not realising his own mistake, that would break the vampire's undead heart entirely.