I have to stop writing. It is like a drug right now and I'm afraid I can't stop. Blame BKO's amazing plot and characters.

I just love the Brethen. Sneaky Gods that have everything planned out. I like them.

I firmly believe that both Melodia and Marno were not evil. It was the Brethen that made them act they way they did.

Disclaimer: Don't own.

Condemned

Many, many years ago, it is said, there was once a group of siblings with an unnatural life, trying to stop a war of many yet to come. In their haste they made a rash deal with a god of darkness, ancient and crafty - never thinking of the consequences that might befall them - and it was only through the intervention of the people of the earth that part of the land was not lost once again to its malicious whims.

They were left to die in the blasted lands, but this was not to be; the Brethen, although furious with the upcome, would wait for the contract to be fulfill. It would watch as one by one, the sibling gods would get a host and inmediatily die with it.

It wasn't until the fifth child survived in his new host that they began to form their plan. They grinned widely.

Given a second chance at a life together the two (both God and host) thrived and led a happy existence, harsh as it sometimes was. If the 'Guardin Spirit' had occasional worries – he never knew the truth behind his awakening, nor why time seemed to overlook his afterwards – they mattered not. Did it truly matter how he arrived at this place? The details, at least to him, were inconsequential.

And so the years pass. And the Brethen watches them both grow, their hearts eventually become one.

What happens next is unexpected, but not at all a cause for alarm – at least, not at first.

The host of the god dies. And the fool was close to take over his heart as well. He was grateful the pair of wretches gave what little life-force they had to their child. Confused at first but then thrilled to see that the boy would be given more time to fulfill their end of the bargain with this new host. Oh, they would not allow him to sleep. Not yet.

But for now they must wait and be patient, a virtue the Brethen have learned to appreciate over the long years of their un-life.

Both the god and child were tainted by the corrupted power; the sibling was reborn with the symbols of his infection jutting forth from his temples (a pair of wings? How fitting), while the girl, although restored to life, carried the mark of the shadow that had touched her and its essence within herself.

But is seemed as the fool could still not get used to the idea of having another host. At this second sundering the boy went quite mad, foreseeing nothing but an eternity without his smile, an eon without his 'friend'. This was the moment the darkness inside of him had been waiting for. They were delighted to see that it affected the girl as well.

The thing they had been harbouring like a parasite saw his tears, sensed her weakness, and pounced upon their soul with blackened, seeking claws.

It spoke, whispering in the maiden's ear with a voice lessened in power but not persuasiveness. The way would be exceedingly long and difficult, it said, but if she did what it instructed, if she accomplished the task set out before her, it would mean an eventual reunion with him. The spirit inside her was thrilled. Excellent, the Brethen thought, because he had taken over her heart her desicions were not up to her but him.

The sibling had regained a new body and would accept a new contract. Melodia thought she was in control as well as Marno but the Brethen knew better. They were both puppets in a play the Gods had created.

Of course, there might be a price to pay, this much was true, but then there always was, wasn't there?

She did not hesitate nor falter. Without so much as flinching the girl accepted the demon's deal, and if she came to regret it in later years she gave no sign of this. Countless of lifes were sacrificed during her tasks.

They had to die to make her master whole again; they had to die to bring the scattered shards of the siblings's soul back together so the devil-god could fulfill its end of the ancient pact. This was what it told her, and this was what she chose to believe. Whether or not it was true, none can say.

Her guilt peered out at her from under hair the colour of fall leaves, but as the years passed it became more and more easy to ignore, and more and more easy to simply not care. Both of them cared not.

The woman the girl has become would never dream of such weakness. For the resurrection to be completed she must live on, and so live on she does.

And if there is guilt there, she takes little notice of it, brushing such unimportant thoughts aside as she wields her borrowed magic. The Brethen is quite pleased with this. Not even the mad whispers of the sibling Gods can stop their brother, not even the adoptive grandfather of the girl can.

They gain another puppet to the play. Apparently the fool thinks the blessing of the Gods will help him with his revenge- The Brethen will have to make a new contract with him, they note- and as both Melodia and Marno go back and rest, they dream. Such pathetic dreams the Brethen thinks.

The girl's dreams are full of white flashing wings beating the air, bearing her away from this world she has come to known.

The sibling God's dreams are of wings as well, but always they change to black smoke, unfurling to save him from a death he longs for even as he leaps.

The Brethen watches and laughs, its cruel sense of mischief stirred by their plight. It has not had so much fun in years.