Writhing, screaming, Kratos lay at the feet of a Goddess. Both were as pale as the Goddess' namesake luinesence, only one of them cried… Or rather only one of them could. Slender fingers twined auburn locks, even as ghostly hands wound around the whimpering human's frame to support him. She supported, and looked on, without horror, without fear, as the crimson lines along the man's back opened. They had started as nicks, and as time wore on grew to terrifying proportion. Every few second they seemed to be gaining yet another inch in length and width, the once dribble of crimson was now a torrent.
"Mithos, you swore this would be painless, that there would be no cost!"
Ice eyes, dead, they focused on him and he shivered.
"Everything has a cost, why should immortality be any different?"
Yuan no longer recognized the cold dead child before him, he moved to go to Kratos' side, perhaps his meager healing mana might be able to reverse… but a familiar power held him back. Origins' power…
Ripping, the sound of skin ripping, the sight of flesh parting, he'd never forget both. Had nightmares been allowed to him after he would have forever dreamed of both that sight and sound, but dreams were no longer his to cherish… or dread. Not after that day.
Kratos' skin writhed, tensed, and coiled; all in patterns so unnatural that there could be no doubt that the creature being wracked by such spasms was no longer be human.
Or sane.
Gasping, no longer able to scream, the mercenary lifted his head. Red dribbled past his lips, a shocking crimson that ran down pallid lips. Hands clenched, turning the dun hued paving stone that adorned the most holy sight of Sylvarant into little more than sand. Kratos arched with a soundless scream, his face contorted in agony, his hands spasming sending the newly made dust to the winds.
Glazed but haunted, those brown eyes turned to them… seeking what, reassurance? Yuan could offer nothing, frozen by place in horror, and the reflected fear in Kratos' eyes made Yuan feel as if he had been part of a betrayal.
Kratos turned away form them both, and the Goddess held him as he mutely cried out and sobbed silently. Sobbed without tears, his pain echoing in the silences of his altered mind.
"Mithos, you're killing him! Stop this!"
Futilely he reached for the Eternal Sword, meant to wrench it from the once noble half elf's hands… and he was rebuffed, again, by Origin.
He collapsed from the unseen reprimand; fell upon his knees gasping in pain. Unable to do anything else he watched. He couldn't save Kratos but he would not abandon his sole human friend.
Something wet, as long as a man was tall surged form the prone man's back. Kratos twisted and the Goddess held him steady, ignorant it seemed of liquid rubies that now dotted her white gown. She looked upon them, upon the once-man in her arms. Tears, colorless, then imbued with the iridescent luminance from her hair, made a rainbow path down her face.
What can I do? Her eyes asked.
"Stop this!" Yuan howled. "I beg you, please, stop this. Kill him if you must, just make it stop!"
And when she looked upon him, the grief said what words could not.
She could not stop it, because it was already completed.
Red dripped from the rock still things that jutted out of Kratos' back, then slowly, oh so slowly the crimson rain fell away. Shivering, coated in slimy black the things twitched, and then fanned out. Feathers, shedding the mess of dead diseased muscle that had sheathed and nurtured them during their birth… They slowly fanned out. Two became four, then eight, wings of impossible length, he shuddered to think of the pain of their birth. Of the impossible being nursed within a mortal's flesh and blood only to be ejected in such a horrible rending.
Such a horrible birth…
Luna looked upon the shivering creature in her hands, the creature her benediction and Mithos' vision had made, she held him close and cried the tears he could not.