Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction biased in the world created by Anne Bishop in her Black Jewels Trilogy. The characters are however are original and copyright of their maker. Keep in mind that not all of these characters are mine. I use them with permission of the maker. This is a thread from Ebony, a forum I role-play on. The link is my homepage if you wish to check it out. As such not all of this is written by me and again is used with permission.

Raith Malakhim is a character made by J and I use him with his permission. Demonica Lunaris is mine.

Place: Hayll
Characters: Black Jeweled Black Widow Warlord Prince Raith Malakhim
Grey Jeweled Black Widow Queen Demonica Lunaris

Writer of this chapter: J

Two days Raith had been gone, two days Demonica had been sending idle summonings through the Ring in varying strengths, he hadn't gone far, the Black still hovered deep below Dreaga, colouring the feel of the city but the metropolis was large enough that it wasn't hard to get lost in, especially if a person was determined and knew the place well.

Both of which could be used to describe its former Ruler.

Odd spats of violence had risen to the Queens attention, a family slaughtered in the slums with an intensity that didn't just boarder on insanity but went straight through it partying all the way, the brutal rape of a young Aristo woman in the Golden Circle, a chunk of Witch Park burnt down, leaving the charred bodies of males Craft pinned to trees and displayed for all to see and other smaller bits, all with Raith's vicious hand over them. There would be more out there, Demonica knew that but she doubted she would ever find them.

If, if he'd been sane, Raith would have recognized what he was going through, would have vanished off to the estate he held out in Reaj, miles from anywhere, Windless and surrounded by nothing but scrubland, he'd bought it as a get away, to protect the land he loved and the people it held, from this, from when he had Descended and was hit by what he was now going though in the middle of the busiest city in all the Realms.

The Rut.

But Raith wasn't sane, and his shattered mind had done what it could to protect Hayll from himself but it wasn't enough. He'd spiraled round the Keep, drawn by some unexplainable force back to it, meeting out sex and violence along the way when the Rut got too much for him and when someone crossed his path at the wrong time. He should have been focused on one female, the cruel hunger and will being channelled into nothing more than fucking the same woman over and over again until he had been satisfied, he should have been but as a child of the Twisted Kingdom what he saw and what he did could wildly vary.

The tugging at his hard cock got worse as another summoning called him and Raith looked up with dead pale eyes to survey the Keep's silhouette against the night sky. Part of him didn't want to go there, but part of him did with a fierce hunger that felt like Saffermate had been poured in him till nothing mattered the need to touch, to fuck, to ram his prick into some woman till she took everything and lay bleeding under his body.

Raith paced, watching the Keep with wild eyes at every turn, if he could just remember why he didn't want to go, why he'd left in the first place. He reached out, one hand extending in his line of sight to cover the Keeps shadowy presence, long black nails digging into the dark sky around it.

Some reason...

Pain flared at his groin, another summoning, worse than before and a noise half way between and snarl and a scream issued from him. Cutting through any other semi coherent thoughts and the Warlord Prince vanished.

Dark stone rose around him as Raith strode through the gates of the Keep, he knew what he wanted now, knew where he was going and anyone was a fool to try and stop him. Guards died as he walked though, he didn't touch them, he didn't need to, his mind reached out, identified them as rivals and burnt them to ground where they stood leaving nothing but Jewel dust and ash.

If he'd have been more physical, if he'd been Eryien he would have fought them, but he wasn't, Raith was Hayllian to his core and so he took the quickest and most surgical method in his arsenal to anything his mind deemed as a competitor for the woman calling him, and the Blood burned.

Three steps up to the massive Black Wood doors which had stood at the Hall's entrance for over 10,000 years, three steps until the very same doors which had protected the Hall for so long were destroyed in ice and fire, the spells protecting them sliced through cleanly, the Black rushing in to fill the gap. Another three steps brought Raith face to face with Sebastian whose head Raith tore from his body without qualm or worry.

Hunger drove him, the smell of blood blocking out everything in his mind but the need to find this woman summoning him. Every step was in screaming agony, every movement through gritted teeth as the pain from the Ring screamed through his body. He could hardly move, but move he had to, to find her, the woman, the Queen, the one who with every blast of agony told him she was the one to satisfy him, the one he'd been looking for in that half broken world he lived in.

The others had been shells, nothing and so when he felt her presence finally Raith did the one thing he could to stop her running like they had tried to.

He slammed the Black round her, caging her in and went to claim his prize.