Chapter 29: Seal of Delirium.

Author's Note: While I'm normally loathe to put those in before the chapter even starts, I feel like this one would be appropriate, as one can never be too safe. Reader discretion is advised, as this chapter contains some amount of gore. Read at your own pace... but please, do enjoy the rest.

Of all things terrifying that pervade our world, no nightmares will haunt us better than those of our own conception.

It didn't take long to line up the few henchmen lucky enough to avoid a fistful from the Hunters against the walls of their prospective targets in the kneeling position, where it was easy to keep an eye on them. Sweeping the quay one last time to account for every last thug that deployed here, Blake strode up to Darius, currently measuring out a sizeable stretch of gauze extracted from the bottomless depths of his cape. Though outwardly as monolithic and menacing as could be, subtle cues made glaring to Blake after a solid half a year spent together indicated beyond doubt that her partner needed this breather as much as she did, if not more. One would never be able to tell from beneath the cape without seeing him on a day-to-day basis, but compared to his usual unflinching stature, his shoulders slumped and his center mass was on the very edge of being thrown off-balance due to the stiff, uncertain stance he'd unknowingly assumed, and even his machinations with the bandage roll lacked the calm precision that otherwise shone in his every movement as he measured out centimeter after centimeter, as if afraid that one rash move will rip it unevenly and too short to make use of.

The purpose behind his actions, however, was beyond apparent, that being the unfortunate Faunus who'd found himself on the wrong side of Darius' grabby appendages, whose face was currently rapidly draining of color in direct proportion to the blood draining out of the open fracture wound. A cursory look at the victim revealed him to possess the unmistakable traits of an avian Faunus, the notable example being his dark hair transitioning into equally dark feathers at the forehead and in the corners of his eye sockets and covering his palms, as well as, it would seem, the characteristic brittleness of bones. How someone let him anywhere near a potential fight was a mystery. But then again, what isn't brittle when an angry Hunter grabs hold of it?

A light elbow jab to the ribs did wonders to bring Darius out of his lethargy, expediting the process dramatically as, in a single motion, he tore off a solid meter of gauze and stepped up to the wounded Faunus. And although the prevailing feelings in his eyes were those of both fear and contempt, it would seem that rapid blood loss had an invigorating effect on his mental faculties, granting him enough reason to not resist Darius' ministrations as he swiftly stopped the bleeding.

"If only you and your buddies displayed such wisdom a mere minute ago," the Silva sighed, still on his knee before the unwilling patient. The mook, it would seem, did not appreciate the snark.

"If only fuckin' Hunters didn't go around pokin' their noses into things that ain't none of their fuckin' business," he sneered. For a second it seemed like he was going to try and spit Darius' way, but the memory of the bone-chilling terror that haunted them oh so recently was still fresh.

"You realize that's weapons-grade Dust you were trying to steal, right?" Darius chuckled. It came out a bit grim for Blake's taste. "Doesn't get much more of our business than this. Tell me, did you mean to use it to fend off Grimm in our stead? Have I completely misinterpreted your noble intentions?"

"I ain't telling you squat. Ask the bossman if you wanna. You humans might like each other."

"There is no way you can tell that I'm human."

"Well, are you?"

"I am."

"Feth off then!"

"G-gratitude," the Silva concluded. Rising to his feet, he turned to face Blake, only to stumble as he ran headfirst into the question so obvious in her piercing gaze it needed no articulation on either side. Looking behind his shoulder at the mangled body still slumped against the Dust container, he slowly shook his head and spoke, voice heavy with remorse:

"I dream of a world where people can learn their lesson without someone paying with their life beforehand," he stiffened up, recollecting his resolve and focusing on the task they were so rudely sidetracked from. "Please retrieve Torchwick for me, Blake. I'd like to get thi…"

"Wait a minute…" a shocked whisper reached the two, yet whilst Darius simply turned his head to lazily eye their captive, Blake couldn't help but freeze up on the spot as the ringing disbelief in the henchman's voice gave way to recognition tinged with hysteria. "Blake? Fuckin' Belladonna Blake?!"

As all semblance of resolve and dignity flew right off the hinges, the Faunus broke into fitful, uncontrollable cackling, attracting the attention of remaining captives, some of whom were equally nonplussed by the identity of their adversary.

"Holy shit, you guys!" just barely managing to pull enough air for a dubiously coherent sentence, the Faunus whispered in between his fits of laughter, addressing his comrades. "That's Adam's whore!"

If there was any more laughter left in him, it had to be all knocked out along with some of his teeth as a brutal backhand from Darius slammed into his jaw, dislocating it with a meaty 'pop'. When the same pale hand grabbed hold of his neck and jerked him up to Silva's eye level, a weak groan of pain escaped with what little oxygen remained from his last breath at his broken arm being rattled around like a ragdoll's.

Blake would have a difficult time describing the roar that came from behind the steel mask as anything other than 'rabid'. Trademark Atlesian temperance, the discipline a fighter acquires over years and years of back-breaking training, the very bonds of civility inured to every human being over millennia of collective effort to survive and thrive: layer after layer, the known, the mundane and the human crumbled around Darius and shriveled like old molt, revealing a glimpse of something truly terrifying in its utter incongruousness towards all things conceivable. Painfully piercing Blake's eardrums, his voice reverberated on frequencies that human voice was never really meant to hit, and comprehension came to her not from interpreting the words that his enraged screaming happened to contain, but rather from the tidal waves of anger and disgust that spilled forth in all directions from him, unabated by such trite human notions like restraint and self-control.

"Open your mouth again, see what happens!"

For a single torturously long second, it seemed all but certain that yet another Fang would fall victim to the wrath that was Darius, yet, evidently, some small vestige of his consciousness retained a grip on reality and, more importantly, himself. Straining against his own body, the iron grip around the Faunus' neck loosened and the thug crashed against the ground like a sack of potatoes, shuddering to so much as look at the human as a coughing fit wracked his whole body.

Said human, meanwhile, stumbled backwards while staring with palpable incredulity at his hand, now shrouded in dark mist to only nominally resemble his limb. Dispelling it by simply shaking it, Darius gripped his face, both hands pressing hard against the cold steel of the mask. Yet just as Blake, seizing the rare free moment, tried to step up to him, a barely audible whispering reached her ears, the simplest words proving to be a challenge to her partner in this precarious state:

"Torchwick. Now. I'll seda…"

A deafening bang cut through the silent air like a knife, and before Blake could so much as begin to react, a red flash crossed her field of vision from the left, striking clear in the back of Darius' head.

While her mind reeled in shock, the body already acted of its own accord, the finely-honed instinct of a killer concocting a plan of counterattack long before she'd become cognizant of it. Without skipping a beat, she threw up her right hand clutching the Gambol Shroud and fired in the direction of the disturbance, which turned out to be none other than Torchwick himself standing atop the triple stack of Dust containers she'd hauled him behind, who reacted to her suppressing fire by dashing to her left. Adrenaline flooding through her system and the frantic pulse of her heart overtaking her hearing, Blake mirrored the movement, partly to further divert his attention from her downed teammate, and partly to put as much distance between him and her as possible before he came to, all while firing at him. With great success, at that: although most shots missed and some only staggered his stride, bouncing off him with barely visible flickers of energy, pointing to him having activated his aura, a singular shot predicted his next step with pinpoint accuracy, striking his foot mid-step and knocking him off-balance, offering a prime opening for retaliation.

A surge of shadow swept across the wharf, covering the entirety of the distance between Blake's previous position and the container stack in as little as a second. Materializing fully in about two meters before the wall, Darius broke seamlessly into a running tumble, covering a good nine meters of height and breaking almost all of his forward momentum in an impressive feat of acrobatics that put him into perfect striking distance. Yet before his boots could once again curbstomp Roman into the unconscious state where he belonged, an ear-splitting roar sundered the air, and a burst of white flashes streaked across the night skies above Blake, slamming right into Darius, knocking him off the container and out of her sight. And as she gazed, wide-eyed, up into the empty expanse above her, her heart dropped into her stomach as she determined the point of origin of these white flashes: the many chambers of a revved-up minigun affixed to a Bullhead approaching from behind her, followed by two more.

Bad as the situation was, however, Blake could only afford to be distracted for so long, lest said situation got even worse. Refocusing her attention on the immediate enemy, she saw Torchwick, already on his feet, train his cane in her direction… yet nowhere near her. Mentally tracing the approximate trajectory of the projectile with the flare from earlier in mind, a horrible realization set in that the charge would tear right through the container full of volatile Dust directly behind her, and she would be too far to intercept it.

Logically, she had to flee immediately.

Breaking into a mad sprint, she came to a belated understanding that there was no way she'd make it far enough before the crate went sky high, as already she could see the fiery red round emerge from behind the muzzle flash of Torchwick's cane.

It was at this point, just barely a second and a half after taking a minigun burst to the side, that Darius emerged from behind the perp.

By some miracle, it would seem that he still retained enough tactical awareness to make the best of the, in truth, undesirable circumstances. Swooping just above, but a good distance away from the platform that Torchwick shot from, both his arms were completely covered in dark energy that extended far past his palms and firmly gripped the edge of the Dust container, priming his entire body as a stone in a sling. The entire maneuver being completely silent, Roman was completely oblivious to a hundred kilograms of muscle and steel slamming boot-first into his back like a cannonball.

It didn't stop the flare loosed from his cane, of course, and a millisecond later it cleaved right through the side of a twelve by three container packed chock-full of volatile Dust, setting all of it off in a devastating chain reaction. Blake, already mid-dive, felt immense heat spread up her legs for a split-second, before she was picked up like a feather and carried a good thirty meters by the blast wave, leaving her just about half a second to try and brace herself before inevitably getting slammed into the wall of the opposite stack of containers. And while there was a thing or two to say for the famous feline flexibility that, combined with her aura, definitely did mitigate some harm, there was only so much an aura could do against heat normally resulting in third-degree burns and blast injuries that would mangle any normal human into a Jenga tower of bone splinters. Combined with her failing to prevent hitting her head against the container, the outlook remained rather grim… and blurry. Fighting against incessant ringing all over her cranium, Blake slightly twisted her hand to grab hold of the ribbon coiled around it and yanked it towards her, hearing the familiar jingle of steel nearing her and thanking the Light, the Dark, and anything in between that the protection of aura extended towards one's clothing and armor. Once the blade was finally within her reach, she rose up to her feet… only to find two of the three gunships hovering above her, their main caliber trained directly at her and crew cables dropping to ground. A mere second later, a clanking of metal against asphalt attracted her ear to her left. It didn't take much effort to make out the characteristic cylinder of a flash grenade.

I-irony.

In any other circumstance, her aura would have counteracted the effects of a flashbang to, if not negligible, at least manageable levels. With it having been battered by a point-blank explosion and having to repair the damage it couldn't outright mitigate, however, she would have to do with shutting her eyes real hard and covering them with her free arm.

She managed to save her vision… more or less.

Agonizing pain shot through her head as an ear-bursting bang skewered all four of her ears with red-hot rods, it felt like, and the hollow ringing of her concussion was joined by the mind-numbing ring of tinnitus. Half-blinded, completely deaf and shell-shocked, there was absolutely no way she could square up to a dozen heavily armored White Fang enforcers that encircled her, half of them training shotguns directly at her. An errant thought of wonder at exactly how the Grimm they managed to get their hands on gear like that crossed her mind before she made the only decision she could at the moment: sheathing Gambol Shroud on her back, she lifted her hands in the air.

She had to stall.

She looked around, feeling her condition stabilize and her senses slowly come back to her. Ten Faunus had her pinned against a triple stack of Dust crates, all armed, half with shotguns. No way through, nor could she just hop over the containers without an acute case of lead poisoning. She threw a glance beyond the group, at the great fire raging on the other end of the quay. Scattered at the forefront of the flames, she could make out the singed corpses of the captives that she and Darius apprehended.

"Brothers… why?" she asked, shaking her head. "Look at what he did! He killed all these Faunus, our brothers, without a second thought, just to get in a good hit on me!"

Two, maybe three of the group turned their heads to closer observe what became of the first assault wave. Without a word, they turned back and renewed their aim on Blake, while one shook his head:

"They ain't your brothers, sister. Don't try to pull this shit."

"What changed?!" she shouted, fists clenched. Some of her captors took this as a threat, immediately stiffening and putting their fingers on the triggers, but Blake, at this point, was a notch too mad to care for that. "I haven't been gone a year, and now the White Fang is shacking up with humans? And what humans! He treats you like slave labor, and you indulge him! Is that what you're fighting for now?"

"What happened, my dear…"

Accompanied by the clacking of his cane, a familiar outline of Torchwick emerged from behind the Faunus directly in front of Blake. Darius' strike clearly got him real good – even now, despite obviously having aura, he was hunched over and that cane he hauled around was, for once, used for its primary purpose. In addition, the left side of his face was quite badly scraped – it would seem he plowed through the asphalt a good distance after falling.

"…Is that these fine fellas here…" he condescendingly patted the shoulder guard of the nearby Faunus. The latter visibly recoiled. "Decided they wanted to upgrade from their girl scout activities like camping out in the forest and marching for charity and actually get something done. These toys aren't easy to come by, you know," he pointed to the military-grade shotgun one of the troopers was holding. The design seemed vaguely Atlesian. "And to get the toys they want, kids sometimes have to do things they don't really wanna do. Really, that's what adult life is all about. I see this as a sign of maturity, personally. Warms my heart, honestly."

He briefly looked at the burned bodies.

"As for those…" he shrugged, his expression a perfectly carefree grin. "I always say a high turnover rate should be one of the most sought-after qualities in an enterprise. It gets the fresh blood in, it gets the stale blood out, they do the hokey-pokey and it gets them all around," he slightly swirled his cane in rhythm to the rhyme. "Lets the young'uns get their nose wet, learn the trade, that kind of stuff. Very good for the economy."

Blake was… speechless. A million years could have passed and the list of obscenities she wanted to scream in his stupid face would not have exhausted a tenth of its length.

But for now, one would have to do.

"I. Hate. You."

"That's nice, girl," the criminal smiled. Turning back to throw a sweeping glance at the wharf and all the Dust he had left to snag, he chuckled. "And they say crime doesn't pay! Sure it does, you just have to be good at it. Now, vigilantism, on the other hand…" he slowly turned back to Blake. "That's a different beast entirely. At best, you stop someone else from taking stuff. At worst…"

He slowly raised his arms to level with his shoulders, inviting everyone involved to take a close look. Slamming the cane back into the ground, he grew serious again.

"Alright, back to business," he declared, raising his voice to address the Faunus pouring out of the Bullheads by the dozens. "Get the cables going! And if you blow up a crate because you can't even get that right, you'd best burn with it."

"Sir," one of the Faunus spoke up. "What about the other one?"

Very slowly, Torchwick's left eyebrow ascended into his hairline.

"Did you not mow him down?"

"Negative. Wing Three managed to get in a good burst after you two went to ground, but before we registered any significant damage, he just… vanished. Into thin air."

Internally, Blake couldn't help but heave a huge sigh of relief.

At least one of us managed to get away and fetch help.

"Congratulations, you idiot," she sneered at Roman. "While you were busy monologuing, police had all the time in the world to get here. Have fun dealing with Vale's entire police force."

"It takes exactly three and a half minutes to get from the nearest PD to here, kiddo," Torchwick shrugged. "If they're not here yet, it means they're still unawares… which is par for the course with them. Fuckin' idiots. More importantly, however, it means your boyfriend has either run with his tail between his legs…"

A smile of pure malice spread across his lips.

"Or he's still hiding here."

Reaching out to the nearest henchman, he pushed him towards Blake.

"You! Sidearm out and grab her! The rest of you – stay sharp and follow us."

"What are we doing this time, sir?" the poor sod charged with apprehending Blake grumbled. As much as she wanted to turn the tables now, the shitshow that just ensued had her rightly worried that he'd just order them both pumped full of lead. For now, just stainless steel against her temple was an acceptable compromise… if worrying.

"We're getting my medication!" Torchwick declared, tossing his cane up and effortlessly catching it after a loop, as if that explained anything.

"Medication?"

"I have this extremely rare and debilitating condition, you see," he kept on blabbering. "And my treatment mandates that I consume at least five minutes of concentrated teenage angsting every. Single. Day. You'd think just sitting down with a book or booting up a shitty movie would do, but no-o-o, that just doesn't do it anymore! Thank the Light for theaters, of course, but you gotta take the real stuff when you see it."

This is the fucking worst.

As the convoy covered about half the distance towards the fire that was slowly taken under control, Torchwick beckoned the Faunus holding Blake at gunpoint to come forward, following suit himself.

"Listen here, you shitty cape-wearing, Gum Fawkes-cosplaying, Spruce Willis-fanboying, Chill Convo-shopping edgelord!" the human proclaimed loudly, pacing around the general area with his arms spread wide. "I know you're hiding around here. You're gonna listen to what I say and you'll listen well, 'cause if you don't, you'll be regretting it for the rest of your very short life."

No answer came.

Blake chuckled:

"Real good burn. You really showed the fire."

"Now listen," ignoring her wholesale, Torchwick continued. "I know how you feel. You're scared. You're scared shitless. I know what you kids get up to these days. You two were having a good time, hormones were acting up, and you decided to go do something stupid, 'cause who the fuck is gonna punish you, am I right? Go walk in dark places late at night, kick some ass with your expensive toys, have a great time."

He paced around still, so far still screaming into the nothingness.

Blake was desperately holding back laughter.

"But you fucked up! You went to the wrong place at the wrong time and you messed with people you shouldn't mess with. People who got way better things to do than humor you and your teenage shenanigans. Shit luck kid, I get it. But life is life – you made a stupid decision, and now your lovebird-" he stumbled, sneaking a peek at Blake. "Your lovekitty? Your kitty cat – got roughed up, and now she's hurt and afraid that you left her alone, and you're desperately holding back a shit."

"Oh fuck you!" finally, the morbid amusement she'd been subjected to boiled over in uncontrollable giggling at the picture he was so lovingly painting. "You're not even the funniest basket case I've…"

She was forced to swallow her words as in one swift motion Torchwick flipped his cane and swung full-force at Blake's jaw, almost causing her to clam down on her tongue. Thankfully, what little remained of her aura softened the impact enough to leave both the bone and the teeth intact.

"Hurt and afraid, I say!" Roman reiterated. "Now listen. There comes a time in every boy's life when he stops being a boy and becomes a man. And no: contrary to what you think, it doesn't come when you do!" he snagged another quick look of his hostage. "Though in all fairness I have to commend your choice here. No, it comes when he takes a look at the mess he's made, steps up and owns up to his mistakes. That is what you're gonna do right now. You're gonna stop hiding and show up right now, ten steps away from me. You take responsibility for the mess you've gotten your kitty in, and the kitty goes free. You don't…" flicking a tiny switch near his thumb, the ring on the bottom of the cane flipped upwards, revealing a gaping black chamber that Torchwick put right in front of Blake's face. "And I do to her face, point-blank, what I did to your head just recently. You remember how that felt, right? We wouldn't want that to happen to her face, now would we?"

Now would be a good time for help to arrive.

Blankly staring down the chamber, Blake raised her eyes to meet Roman's:

"You had fun screaming at air?" she asked. "I really hope all that was worth the Dust you could've gotten if you did something productive instead."

"You can tell he's a shy one," Torchwick pondered. "Fellas like him need someone to break them out of their shell and just hold them there 'till they acquire a taste for the world. You know, I myself always was more of a go-getter, and usually stuck around guys like me. But don't you worry, I know my ways around those, too. Someone else hold her down!"

"Oh what do you want now?!" Blake clamored in indignation as another Faunus joined the oaf holding her down and, through collective effort, the two eventually managed to pin her down.

"Honestly, how hard is it to play along?" briefly crouching down before her, Roman shook his head before standing back up… and stepping down on her right kneecap with all his might, crushing it with a quiet crunch.

For a brief second, Blake was actually grateful that the two Faunus that firmly pinned her to the ground actually did their job, preventing any further damage to her leg as the initial wave of pain washed over her, causing her vision to dim and the most obscene curses spill forth from her mouth. She allowed no longer than a couple seconds of that, however. Any more and the piece of shit will probably enjoy it.

"I'm going to kill you, Torchwick," teeth clenched to the point of grinding, Blake tried her best to measure her breath to concentrate on something other than the pain and the anger that seeped into her mind like the sweetest honey. "I'm going to kill you, you vile filth, you..."

"Better do it right now, then," quietly chuckling to himself, Torchwick trained his cane at her again, then spoke up again. "'Cause in ten seconds I'm gonna…"

And then he froze.

And so did Blake.

Oh no.

No, please, NO!

Standing at the very edge of the shadows cast by the waning flame, just five steps away from the group, a lone figure stood clad in a black cape reaching down all the way to the soles of its steel boots, a featureless mask resting upon its face.

Why didn't he get reinforcements?! He must still be in control somehow, he wouldn't just show up right in front of them!

Right?!

"So. Only took us maiming your girl for you to finally show your face," Torchwick quipped. Had Blake not been so transfixed upon the figure looming over several dozen armed Faunus holding him at gunpoint, she would've noticed that the man was slowly inching away from Blake and her captors and behind his subordinates. "No, wait. You don't even have the courtesy to do that. Why don't you take off that stupid mask and show yourself?"

Even if he heard his words, the figure didn't respond in any perceivable way, its sole focus being the Faunus currently holding Blake at gunpoint.

The figure stepped towards the group.

Even though the wound was still fresh, Blake couldn't so much as muster the will to scream in pain as the Fang jerked backwards, dragging her with him, and burrowed the barrel of the gun deeper in her temple.

"Don't you fucking move!"

It didn't. Instead, its elbow contracted and its hand slowly began reaching upwards, in the direction of its mask.

This thing can't be Darius. It can't be!

A bead of ice-cold sweat ran down Blake's forehead. Every cell in her body was screaming in panic as her very being was torn apart between two conflicting extremes: the galvanized flight instinct begging her to get out of here right this second, even if it meant scrambling on all three of her still functional limbs, and the paralysis that prohibited her from so much as blinking for fear of letting the caped figure out of her sight. There was no way others couldn't feel it. No matter how similar the thing standing before them was to her partner, no matter the indisputable overlaps in height, build, attire and gear, that thing could not be Darius, for the simple reason that it could not be. To call that thing by the name of her friend, to call it human, would be equivalent to calling a human-shaped casket stuffed with flesh, sinew and bone human. Everything that made one seem human, this thing lacked completely, replaced instead with all-encompassing, incomprehensible murderous intent. Where Blake saw a few dozen terrified Faunus and a strikingly vile human, that thing saw bodies that for whatever reason moved of their own accord. And it loathed the concept.

He'd never hurt me. He never did.

This can't be him…

It was going to kill them all. She was going to die here, in this Light-forsaken port, screaming for help that would never come as a thing that could not be ripped her to shreds, and there was no one she could blame but her own incessant curiosity.

Please… please help me, Darius...

With a gut-wrenching clang, the steel mask crumpled like paper in Darius' pallid hand.

If indeed this was a nightmare, it had to be the kind one does not wake up from.

Like a man thrashing in the grips of a fever pitch, when the bleak reality and the inconceivable delusions birthed by the illness-addled mind lose their distinctions, melding together and becoming one and the same, ushering the self into the realm of delirium before the gates of eternal sleep - that was what Blake felt. For indeed, there could be no rationalization that a human mind could comprehend to explain what she saw as something other than a figment of a dying mind clutching desperately onto the last seconds of life. The ground, the air, her very own body - things that were formerly so indisputably tangible and real, appeared now as fleeting, nigh ephemeral threads of fabric that would come undone at the slightest touch, dissolving into the nothing from which they came. Yet like a magnet attracted to the pull of its neighbor, following strictly with the fundamental law of creation laid out eons before, so too was her gaze inevitably attracted to the only thing that was real - the thing that could not be.

Roaring like a river that spanned the universe itself, pure cosmic energy molded Darius' body like clay: where one moment it stretched in a web of shimmering black cracks in the withering white marble of his skin, it would the next flow like ichor through the roiling muscles, veins pumping with malignant vigor, and in the third it cut like ropes into his face, bloated akin to a drowner's. A thousand unspeakable permutations, stultifying in their hideousness, flashing for but an instant after one another yet happening all at onceat the same time.

Yet as his flesh contorted, melted and screamed in abject agony at its utter failure to so much as approximate the impossible likeness of the entity that came into being, one constant remained. Collapsing unto themselves and subsequently pulling in everything around them, the vast expanse of the infinitesimal singularities that were Darius' eyes engulfed everything within Blake's vision as the hatred that burned within them radiated into the world without constraint: an emotion uniquely innate to humans, yet brimming with an intensity that all of Remnant could not hope to match. And as those scorching winds eroded her very essence, particle by particle, substituting everything that she once was with itself, she sensed a singular message being communicated to her and to everyone in the vicinity, a demand that afforded no alternative interpretations as it branded itself directly upon her brain crust:

LET

GO

An impossible tightness gripped Blake's chest. In an instant, every notion, every preconception about the transience of her own body evaporated like mist and the world lost its colors as she struggled to take another breath. Disobeying every command, her muscles seized and her fingernails pierced her palms as, beat after beat, her heart burst and was repaired again and again by the last fleeting embers of her aura as her mind was taken over the edge, before at last her body collapsed on the ground, no longer supported by the goon who'd long forgotten about her existence. With what little control her fading consciousness still had over her seizing limbs, she reached with unfeeling fingers into the pocket of her trousers, recognizing the Dust crystal more by its sharp edges than by the texture of the material. With one last command, her hand clutched it with a dead man's grip, and Blake shut her eyes as energy flowed into her body. Her entire body wracked by trembling, she felt her mouth muttering something, yet had neither the presence of mind to comprehend her own thoughts, nor the hearing to discern those words as they were consumed in a discordant cacophony of screams of both horror and agony, accompanied by the grim orchestra of flesh rent from flesh and bones crushed into powder.

Perhaps one of the voices pleading for mercy was her own. Or perhaps she was, indeed, flapping her mouth for nothing, reduced to a thoughtless body on the ground. Yet if there was one thing, one thought that she could, for certain, attribute to herself only, it would be the desperate wish to, had she the ability, beg the Light, the Dark, anything that would listen, really, to wake her up from this horrible nightmare. Her and Darius, seemingly lost forever in the delirium of bloodshed.

It was at that point that she realized she could no longer hear the screaming.

Sucking in an uneven breath, Blake opened her eyes, realizing immediately something red was obscuring her vision. Though initially intent to just wipe them off, it took Blake almost all of her strength to so much as lift her arm, and as she did that, her vision dimmed only further as more red dripped generously from what was once a white sleeve. She had accomplished her goal, however… if only by just letting her arm limply fall onto her face and plop back on the ground with a splashing sound, taking most of the red with it. Exhausted completely, Blake could only somewhat nudge her neck to the left, letting her head fall the rest of the way in her desire to further examine the strange sound.

It was then that it finally caught up with her mind what kind of red that was, for merely a couple of steps away from her, a torso missing both its legs and its head lay in a pool of blood and viscera, about half of its ribcage strewn outwards as ribs were ripped out of it and broken off in the process.

Lacking the strength to so much as look away, Blake felt her heart pound faster once again as she remained transfixed upon the mangled body, and the pain in her chest flare up again. The nightmare continued, and with her being the only survivor, it meant only moments before…

"Blake?.."

For a second that spanned eternity itself, Blake thought her heart would never remember how to beat again.

"Blake!"

A stray whisper was louder, yet to her it was enough. As a trembling hand gently cupped her chin to turn her head away from the gruesome sight, she felt herself shaking like a leaf in the wind as every vestige of pretend control that her body frantically attempted to gather in the last second was let go at once.

"Blake..." Darius' vocabulary seemed awfully stunted for the moment, yet the intent behind the frenetic darting of his bloodshot eyes, flung wide open in terror and shock, was clearly to assess the damage. Unable to say even a single word, Blake could only twitch her lips in a weak attempt to smile, communicating that for now, at least, she was fine.

As her consciousness faded, she hoped that would be enough.