Smoke. Cinders. Blood. All mixing together into a disgusting slurry of reek which coated his tongue and the back of his throat in a foul layer and made him want to gag as he continued to stand there, rooted to the spot and staring at the horror being played out in front of him. The night sky was thick with so much smoke and soot from the burning buildings that it was as if the moon and the stars had gone out. His vision was overlain in shades of red and amber as the light of the ravenous flames flickered, swarming over the areas the fire had yet to touch but would soon devour with hungry cracks and columns of sparks cast skywards. The once orderly streets had been turned up, scattered with bent bodies and broken cobble stones and swamped in so much blood and gore that it looked as if a downpour of rain were occurring. The river below the wooden bridge had begun to run red.

Inferus were predators, Claymore were mongrels-part of both species but belonging to neither-and the Awakened were malicious and cruel but even the Abyssal Four had never done this. It was humans, normal humans, which were the real monsters. Not because they had nightmarish powers. Not because they had terrible twisted forms. Not because they fed on entrails in an effort to fill a hunger which refused to be sated. Because they preyed on their own with a cruelty which nothing else could match, and laughed as they did it.

Some people in Foxwick were still alive. Tom knew because, as he stumbled forward off the bridge and began to trudge through the blood turn he could hear them screaming. Woman, all of them. High pitched and keening as they were forced to witness the men in their families slaughtered or…worse. The mere thought of it made his stomach turn but he wasn't about to go rushing to their aid. He wasn't a hero and wasn't about to become one. He didn't care about them or what happened to them. All that he cared about was finding his Sparkling and getting the hell out of there before the little Wizard could be hurt. Protect him. Never let him go again. Never.

He was paid no mind by the bandits as they continued their brutal raid; they'd laugh at him as they ran by, spit at him on occasion, but wouldn't raise their weapons likely not wanting to provoke him to attack them despite the Order's law they believed was their protection. Their mutt of a leader was ahead of him, still astride his horse; a man holding a fire poker leapt at him from within his burning home and was cut down without mercy by the bandit's blade. Blood splattered him in a fine mist as the man fell but he ignored it and kept going. Walking towards the house where the family he'd left his Sparkling with had lived and finding it, like all the others, engulfed in flame.

Where was he? Where! He couldn't be dead. He refused to believe it. He'd know if it were true, somehow. His Inferus would have sensed it, even if his human half could not. Where! Where! There must be some sign. Tom turned his head this way and that, silver eyes darting around the area in a desperate search. There had to be some sign. Some clue. He couldn't still be in that house, burned to cinders and chips of bone. He couldn't.

"Harry!" His voice echoed through the crumbling street, distorted by the corpses and the smoke. The fumes which filled the air were beginning to become too much even for him, burning his lungs with their heat and chemical sharpness. He coughed. Squinting. Eyes watering as he continued his desperate search. "Sparkling! Please! Answer me!"

Left. Right. Left again and then he saw it. Crumpled on the street in the midst of a puddle of blood and minced flesh and soot. A sight which filled him with a potent mix of fear and rage that made his chest tight and his Dark Aura whip wildly around him, boring a crater in the ground and blowing over the nearest house. Tom almost lost his grip and Awakened then and there and only the knowledge that he'd be of no help to Harry beyond, perhaps, transforming him into dinner if he gave in to his Inferus kept him from it. Tripping forwards on his iron greaves to where the now ruined traveling cloak lay Tom bent and picked it up with shaking hands.

He couldn't be far. And that he'd found the cloak outside, and unaccompanied by the little Wizard's corpse, was encouraging. It had been lying in a puddle of blood from the dead; nothing which stained it, he told himself, belonged to his Sparkling. He'd know if it had. It would have smelled like him. And then there'd have been even greater hell to pay. With any luck, Harry was fine. With any luck, he'd escaped into the forest surrounding the village and was hiding in safety. With any luck-movement in his peripheral vision cut that thought off and Tom's head whipped around with a predatory hiss.

Standing there, staring at him with wide crazed eyes and with his stump still dripping was the man. The man whose hand he'd lopped off back in the middle of the forest. The man who had been stalking them. Who he'd recognized amidst the pack of bandits. And slumped behind him, either unconscious or dead, was…

"What's wrong, Claymore? Did you come back because you realized you forgot something?" he drawled, face splitting into a mad grin. "That's unfortunate because I don't like to part with my share so I'm afraid that I can't give him back to you. But you don't need to worry. I'll take good care of him."

Tom snarled, eyes changing from silver to gold to red as his Inferus tried to force itself again to the surface. His aura crackling around him, popping like the exploding cobble stones as his form attempted to shift. His skin suddenly feeling incredibly tight. His bones feeling as if they'd been arranged wrong. Small. Why was he so small? He should be larger than this. His body was wrong! He shouldn't have legs like this! If he just relaxed his control a bit more he could fix himself and then he'd see to…No! Focus!

"You were going to get rid of him anyway, weren't you? You don't have any right to him anymore. This pretty piece of meat belongs to me now."

MINE!

The monstrous half of him pulled away and he snapped fully back into himself, a tide of black rage flooding over him like a storm surge of caustic venom and all thought and care of law and consequence went out the window. All that he cared about in that moment was getting his raven away from the man and making him, making all of them, pay for what he'd no doubt been put through.

The massive blade of his sword flashed crimson before it had even tasted blood and sent a great splatter of scarlet fluid against the wall behind him. The man collapsed, his head flying away into the darkness, and Tom swung again for good measure. His monstrous side roaring in hunger and glee as he turned his attention to the rest of the mongrel filth which were all that were left in the village. He raced down blood soaked streets and leapt from rooftops and by the time he was finished neither man nor horse was left alive. Driven by something he couldn't explain, he set to the work of arranging them into a gift for his raven. Stopping only once a fractal of pulverized flesh and broken bone spiraled out across the street around them with the still unconscious wizard lying in the center.

His Inferus snorted its satisfaction at his work and Tom went back to where Harry had been lying, lifting him into his lap and wrapping his body around him. Snuggling close. Checking him for injuries. Then bedding down against the stone to wait until his Sparkling woke up. Finally as the sun began to rise, the fires burning down and the smoke beginning to clear, green eyes slid open. He jerked when he realized he was being held and began to struggle and the Claymore tucked his head beneath his chin and crooned. The rumbling sound was something impossible for a human to produce and assured the boy that he wasn't being held captive by one of the attackers from the night before.

"Tom?" his voice was small. Dry and broken. He still sounded scared and Tom hated it, his other half snarling; as much as a large part of his instinct still urged him to devour the Wizard the Inferus was incensed that the boy could be afraid of them when all they'd ever done was protect him. "You came back."

"Of course I came back." He said. "I wanted you to have a better life here not to have you get killed by bandits."

Harry shifted in his arms and the Claymore loosened his grip enough to allow him to do so. "You're covered in blood." So incredibly observant. He craned his head enough to peer over his shoulder and went pale, no doubt having spied the macabre gift he'd left for him like a cat might a bird it had killed for its owner. "You killed them."

"All of them." He confirmed. "They deserved it. Bloody animals. Should have known better than to attack what was mine to protect if they'd wanted to live!"

"But the Order's law…" his green eyes were beginning to brighten as tears threatened. Tom crooned again but it did nothing, this time, and the tears spilled over. "What's going to happen now? They're going to be after you aren't they? They'll try and kill you."

"Harry."

"This is my fault! I'm so sorry! This is my fault!"

"Harry!"

"If I hadn't followed you after I was thrown out of Godric's Hollow-!"

Snarling, Tom shut the boy up in the only way he could. Lunging forwards, pursuing him when the little Wizard jerked back in surprise, he pressed his mouth against his. Harry let out a squawk of surprise which quickly turned into a moan, tiny and embarrassed sounding though for what reason Tom couldn't fathom as no one alive was around to see them, and reached up to twine his fingers in his soft silver curls. He deepened the kiss with a low purr, rising in volume when the smaller male let him in. Pulling him closer. Blunted nails scraping at his scalp.

Mine. Pulling back briefly to allow the raven to breathe he went in again for another kiss. Mine! He took full advantage of the newly exposed territory, his purring growing louder as Harry clung to him. Never, never, never let you go. Never again.

Once absolutely certain he wouldn't start prattling on again once given the chance Tom broke off the kiss yet again and straightened up. "They're going to be after me now, Sparkling. For breaking their precious 'no killing humans' rule, I'll be put to death." His thin lips drew back into a sharp smirk. "Provided they manage to assemble a team strong enough to pull it off, which won't happen quickly. We have a bit of a head start in this game of tag."

"You're not going to leave me again, are you?" grimacing at the blood slathered across his skin and clothing, Harry still repositioned himself appropriately in Tom's lap to tuck his head into the side of his neck.

"No. I'm not going to leave you again, Sparkling." He propped his chin on the top of his head again. "You're going to stay right here, with me, until the very end."