I decided to revise my old story Satisfaction for Death, I wrote it blindly out of anger and it really sucked. I'm trying to incorporate more of a plot, yet maintain the previous gore level this time. It has a new spin to it now, with Shesta coming in and taking a dominant lead in Dilandau's "life". I hope there aren't too many spelling errors. I don't have anyone toread my work before I submit. The first three or so chapter will be from another person's point of view, and then the chapters will start to be quicker as all of the characters converge into a single environment. Celena will be the prologue seeing as she doesn't have much of a reaction like the others will. Yeah, tell me what you think (should I continue it, dump it) and enjoy the prologue.

Disclaimer: I don't own Escaflowne, what a big fucking surprise.

Submissive Slaughter

Prologue - Celena


Adrenaline skyrocketed with every quick breath inhaled. The fifteen-year-olds heart raced like a winning race car at the Daytona 500. Yet the being didn't have a clue what Daytona was or a race car. The only thought surging through the sleeping body was to simply destroy.

It didn't matter who or what was killed. As long as he could let his flamethrower roar, everything was perfect. Everything was as perfect as the death totals that were raised every day from the war, resulting in the creation of his nirvana. With every blood curdling scream, with every stilled heartbeat, with every cold corpse invoked his personal haven.

But Dilandau Albatou couldn't imagine the coldness of death. For all he felt was the rush of fire and energy. His eternal inferno sang into the black midnight like a thousand screams from a rival country, a fallen land meeting his untamed rage for the first time.

He walked slowly through the hell he had established alone. Frightened figures came and went chaotically in a panicked state, rushing through the black, curling smoke and running the opposite direction of Dilandau when they noticed him. The foolish and blind sprinters were slaughtered in a matter of seconds. A particularly inattentive man was stumbling around the singed cobblestone street, beating the licking flames from his night robe and screaming for assistance as he suffocated on the toxic smoke.

Dilandau took hold of the hilt of his sword and tugged it from his sheath, smiling wickedly. Once again, he couldn't imagine the chilling blade, only surging heat. Charging toward the man he watched with amusement as his sword sliced his head off. The severed head held the expression of pained screaming, his mouth was pulled fixedly open and his eyes were squinted and had been stung from the fire-chocked air. His victims bleeding, decapitated body, dropped down onto the patterned pavement. Flames bit more and more at the night robe of the headless body, devouring the body in hot searing heat.

Laughter erupted from the pale passerby's lips. Yet the raining storm of cackling was partially out of pleasure, the main reason was he had gone completely insane.

The commander of the once-elite Dragon Slayers kept walking through his holocaust with unstable glee. Occasionally he sauntered upon another poor soul attempting to escape the destruction. Those people littered the ground just like the previously executed man.

His most recent victim's blood dotted his pale face and began drying into his facial lines. Red eyes stared down at the raven hair and tan skin of the maimed child. A wooden sword was in the petite open hands of the young boy, a large chunk of the weapon was cut away from when Dilandau had struck down with his own. Gloved fingers were raised to his marred cheek, he ran them over his face. The crimson blood smeared over his scar, red eyes blazing from thoughts; knowing one day the person who had marred his beautiful face, that specific bastard's blood would wash over him soon.

Unusual noises broke Dilandau off from his thoughts. Another person approached, oddly though, with casual steps lacking the hurry and fear like the others. Those steps sounded so common, so familiar, had Dilandau met this person before?

The faint voice reached his ears, "Lord Dilandau." Crimson eyes shot open from recognition, "Shesta?" he cried out, turning and searching out his comrade in the semi-spreading smoke.

A young man, shorter than him, stood a little distance away, cloaked in dissipating grey clouds. "Shesta; they told me you were dead!" Dilandau yelled, staggering from surprise.

"Dead…" the words rolled off of the Dragon Slayers' lips strangely.

A silence pressed between them and Dilandau took the time to gather all of his millions of questions. "Shesta, I'm sorry." Much to the taller boy's astonishment, Shesta did not seem at all moved by the rare and sudden announcement of guilt. "Shesta?" sternly called out Dilandau.

"Yes Lord Dilandau?"

"I'm sorry I let you all die…we were in a situation where I should have been able to protect you. If only I had…if I had been the lord I'm supposed to be, none of this would have happened." The commander's voice was shaky. "It's my fault!"

"I know," he said, those two words dripping with venom.

Silver brows furrowed together in confusion and red eyes narrowed in condescendence. Dilandau was choosing his future actions, should he beat him or take the blame?

"Hit me if you want," the Dragon Slayer said as if reading his lord's mind. The boy clad in his Zaibach elite armor stepped forward, revealing himself to Dilandau. Dilandau paled considerably, taking on a ghastly-sick hue of death as he stumbled back in surprise. His wide eyes took in all of the shattered body that stood in front of him.

The once innocent looking Shesta now stood before his lord decrepit and decayed. His skin was oily-brown and decomposed, a few strands of flaxen hair still lingered. His left eye was gone, an empty hollow socket held the darkness of purgatory within it; his right blue eye still remained partially intact, glazed over and ashen blue. Shesta's lips were rotten and no-longer existent; his white teeth were visible and gave him the abnormal expression of grinning.

"You're dead!" Dilandau croaked out in horror.

"We're all dead." Shesta said startlingly clear without the aid of his absent mouth.

"Gods…" The pale boy's face distorted and soon relaxed into a fearful state, drowned in morbid sorrow and overcome by tragedy.

"The Mystic Moon girl and the young king are responsible for this too."

Dilandau felt his fear be replaced with rage as he heard of the new scapegoats.

"You should kill them my lord, we want you to kill them. We all do. Kill them."

"Shesta, you know I can't. Not when I'm trapped within Celena." Dilandau oddly began pleading.

"Kill them."

"You damn well know I can't!"

Shesta stepped back into the dying fire, pleased with delivering their message. "Where are you going?" Dilandau commanded. The solitaire dead eye rolled to look over at him, "Our home," he whispered, retreating into the fire before Dilandau could stop him. The figure of the young soldier disappeared, leaving Dilandau alone. With a sickening realization, he figured out what "our home" was…it was hell.

The trapped albino paused, then began walking through the cinders and smoldering ruble of the city. He continued his game of killing the stragglers who had managed to survive the initial blaze in this dream world of Celena's mind. Deep down inside of him he was still begging for more to rip apart, he faintly repressed it as he claimed his composure once again after disfiguring another poor victim. He took in the smoke filled air with deep breaths and felt no pain when it attempted to sting his settling bloodthirsty eyes.

He was just a caged animal.

He fell to his armor clad, blood drenched knees. Dilandau leaned his head back and noticed his silver tresses were stuck to his head with drying blood. Up he stared at the clearing sky with its stars and moons, high in the almost never-ending sky of Gaea. "Kill them" the wind seemed to sing so ethereally.

Dilandau smiled, laughed, and then quietly said, "I will. I will." His dying fire landscape became a distant blur as he felt his conscious grow physically stronger; he reached out towards the one trapping him.

"Celena… Celena, are you there?" he whispered.

"Hm," the feminine voice was soft and drowsy.

"Remember how I've been telling you I'm going to revolt?"

"You know you can't," she spoke slowly; "you're too weak."

"When you're asleep I can do it."

"No, you've tried and that hasn't work. Just give up and let me reclaim my lost years." Celena snuggled into her sheets more as she spoke in her dreams.

"You're asleep now."

"That's only time we can talk so freely…shut up and let me sleep." She repressed a yawn and drifted back into her nightmares of Dilandau in search of rest. Though the nightmare was not there as usual, a nice change, but uncommon for Celena. Blues eye shot open as she felt a tremor shoot through her entire body, hot and violent. "Stop!" she screamed, wide awake and trembling in her bed. Her breaths were quickly drawn in and out, unsure and surprised. He could never reach me while I was awake and in control before!

"Celena…" Dilandau said in a taunting fashion, using her mouth.

"Gods!" roared Celena, her screech masked by distinct cackling and her soul masked by dark fire.