The night air is crisp.
Raizel lifts his head and his powers, soaking the sky in red like it is the end of the world. "I do not stand before you as the Noblesse," he begins. "I stand before you as Raizel, and I will sentence you as Raizel."
The ground trembles, and heaven shudders. He is a storm, and Urokai gazes up at him, caught by beauty, dwarfed and possessed. Raizel—everything he has ever wanted.
Urokai was no fickle creature.
He had been loyal century after century, darling and doting. It is the least he can do for his honorable liege.
When Urokai was only a child, barely the age of twelve, his predecessor was vanquished before his young, wide eyes, sentenced with a thundering vortex of blood that crashed into the ceiling of the Lord's throne room. Sir Raizel, honorable and powerful, had saved Urokai from his own father's vindictive clutches. When the blood had cleared, leaving only the memory of a clan leader in its wake, Urokai threw himself to Raizel's feet, groveling and begging and thanking him for his duty with as much heart as Urokai's little body could contain.
But even so, the boy still carried his predecessor with him, if not in soul then in teaching. He had been taught to bite, take, and mutate, taught that the humans were nothing more than potential servants, and if they were anymore, they were monsters. By then, they had already spread mutant plagues across the land. For a long time, however, it did not matter what the humans were or were not; they were far away, and centuries later, Urokai forgot about them.
Sir Raizel, the just, noble, merciless Noblesse, whose judgment was absolute, and whose execution was flawless, was deserving of worship. This, Urokai knew.
The humans told stories of the so called Devil, who tempts and corrupts those once pure and perfect, and the Devil, of human stories and human made, had arrived on the shores of Lukedonia.
Urokai, who had always been adoring and dutiful, the youngest clan leader who had so quickly risen to power upon the execution of his predecessor, was swiftly and easily forgotten for a conniving, monstrous human, bold and insolent enough to demand residence within the highest house, the House of the Noblesse. His powers were both blindingly bright and pitch black, both disgustingly repulsive and wondrously magnetic.
Frankenstein was always there, stalking and haunting the halls, a crescent smile and sharp sickle eyes glinting with conspiracy. He would be the plague that would fall upon Raizel's house and the rest of Lukedonia, their land, their home. And yet, Sir Raizel—honorable, wise, perfect Sir Raizel—welcomed him with uncanny tenderness, never once extended so generously to Urokai, the one who had honored and worshipped him for centuries. He was displaced, and the one who took his rightful place was no more than a strange, unfamiliar harpy, chimera, siren—a human, a stealer of noble souls.
The night Frankenstein took Urokai's eye was the night Sir Raizel, for the first time, betrayed his own nobility. In his great judgement, he had saved Frankenstein, hardly giving the river of blood on Urokai's own face a second glance. The second time Raizel betrayed his nobility was their contract. Frankenstein flared his cascade of stolen nobility from the pit of his soul, shimmering, arrogant, and vain. He had became Raizel's bonded, and it was outrageous, stupendous, miraculous.
Urokai had heard the stories; they say the Devil is capable of miracles too.
"So you have found me, Sir Raizel," Urokai says. His smile is slight, careful, and awful. He looks down and takes a deep breath, perhaps his final, and extends his hand. Dragus surges through him and whispers to life in his grip. The blade slices the air in a wide arc, dramatic and pointless. "I suppose it is only appropriate I fight for my life then…"
Without another word, Raizel extends his hand, and from it blossoms blood, roaring and relentless as his amorphous wings take shape.
"You're...really going to waste your life force on me?" A bitter chuckle slips from Urokai. Quietly, to himself, he says, "The first time you look at me after all this time, and all you have is contempt…"
"You are always with him—Frankenstein," Urokai said to Ragar. They walked side by side on the same dirt path under the canopy of leaves. Sunlight shapes shifted over their features.
Ragar tossed a small, pink fruit in the air and then caught it again in time to his leisurely step. Then, he looked down and delicately picked at the pebbled skin, working away to reveal its soft white flesh. "Hm," was his only response, a simple affirmative.
"Why? What do you get from him?"
Fruit peeled, Ragar held it up to the light between two careful fingers, revealing its slight translucence. "I get this fruit," he said, only further perplexing Urokai. He held it out to him. "It is a lychee. It is sweet."
"I don't want it," Urokai refused flatly.
"Unfortunate." Ragar withdrew the offer, and then quickly pulled his mask down to toss it into his own mouth. After a second or so, he turned to spit the dark, shiny seed onto the earth. "I remember to spit out the pit now," he informed rather proudly, tugging at his mask.
Urokai watched this all with a dumbfoundedness unfamiliar to him.
Ragar, noticing his troubled stare, sighed quietly, vaguely pleased expression dampening as he looked ahead again into the distance as they slowly came upon the shape of Urokai's home. "Simply, Urokai, I enjoy his company and his person. I do not have to 'get' anything from him."
"But he is human."
Ragar stilled, stopping in his tracks. For a moment, all tenderness fell from his face and was replaced by a cynical edge. "Urokai." He turned to face him. "Being human does not diminish Frankenstein's qualities." Softly, he shook his head. "No, I should say he is even more impressive because of it." Ragar turned forward, continuing to walk. "I do not understand your animosity for him. Is it your eye? Are you humiliated, Urokai, to have been caught off guard by a human?"
Urokai stiffened. His lips thinned into an angry line.
"You should not be," Ragar reassured him, an infuriating genuineness in his now softened tone, as if he truly meant every word he said. "He is as capable as any of us. And now with the bond to Sir R—"
"Do not—!" Urokai snapped, flaring uncontrolled, before immediately biting down on his outburst. "I...It is a surprise to me, the contract…"
Ragar assessed him with a long, hot, uncomfortable gaze. "Hm," he hummed, turning forward again. His hair swayed with the slow, wisened shake of his head. "I am not surprised by it. I think it is only expected."
"How can you say that?"
Ragar considered for a moment in easy silence before answering, "From my time with them, they appear to be...remarkably the same…"
"What?" Urokai face creased harshly, lips pulling with a barely restrained grimace. "That is...there is no way that is possible…"
"We have arrived at your home," Ragar announced. He turned and nodded, politely, curtly. "I will leave you here, Urokai," he said, and then began to stride away.
"Is your home not in the other direction, Ragar?"
"Sir Raizel and Frankenstein will be expecting me for supper."
Ragar disappeared before Urokai could get in another word, but he stared, mystified, at the empty space where he had stood. It appeared as if Urokai had been deserted.
Power, as grand as perdition, fractures the earth. Urokai is shoved down and driven into the ground, taking the brunt of the attack with Dragus held in front of his chest. He already knows he will lose, and it is like waking up in ice cold water when he realizes that he knows.
He struggles to his feet and stares up at Raizel's perfect, ruined form, radiating power like sun and godhood in the sky, utterly, completely, uncaring. He wonders where all his tenderness has gone. Urokai smiles dismally, now beaten and bloodied, as he feels the world turn its back on him, leaving him to rot in the cold in his lonesome. "There is no way you could have found this place…" he begins to wonder, only delaying his inevitable demise. "Only I and Zarga…" It dawns on him then, what has happened. He lifts his head, eyes wide and trembling, overcome by the cruelty of the world before him. The closest thing he has ever had to a friend, and Zarga, too, has betrayed him, deserted him, and he is truly alone.
No one to save you.
Urokai holds out his hand and unfurls his fingers. Dragus disappears. He lowers his head and laughs joylessly, hair obscuring his face. Voice tight, on the verge of cracking, he pleas, "May I ask you just one thing, Sir Raizel?"
Raizel reigns in his sweeping powers, poised to decimate.
"Do you hate me?"
A long silence follows. And then, Raizel says, "I do."
"Good." Urokai grins. "That's good...You should." Then he laughs again, pained and defeated in his own misery.
Raizel brings down the force of heaven upon him, and his laughter dies with him.
Frankenstein rounds the corner of the hall, hounding and electrified, claws and fangs aching for the fresh spill of blood. The floor of the facility blackens in his blazing trail, and he breathes with pounding, blind malice. It thrums in his veins and burns him beautifully wherever Dark Spear reaches. Those few bumbling agents attempting to get in his way are expeditiously and impersonally drained of all life without even the opportunity to cry for mercy.
Zarga throws his blade back in the narrow hallway. "You don't understand—"
"No, I think I understand perfectly well." Frankenstein's scowl mutates into a fanged snarl, all pointed and hungry teeth ready to tear apart all in his path.
"I was the one who—"
"I don't need to hear it!" A crest of darkness shatters the walls as it hurtles towards Zarga and crushes him under the welcoming wails of the damned.
Darkness has crawled up to Frankenstein's face, and all he can comprehend is a desperate cheering for more destruction. He trembles with his terrible lover's power, embraced and seduced. He sees Zarga before him, and cares not for what he has to say; he can barely hear him above the parade of souls swarming and buzzing, sighing and screaming within him. So Frankenstein submits with eager fervor, scrambling towards a different kind of climax. Hatred and hunger become indistinguishable to him.
At the impact of Zarga's red noble powers, at the slice of his chained blade, he is only spurred on.
Unheeding, Frankenstein's intimate darkness floods the halls, paints the floor, walls, ceiling, and he feels his consciousness spread thin across his many, many souls. They clamor and call for more and more. Then, all of them and their many, many unseeing eyes turn upon Zarga, small and trapped in their horrid, cosmic space, their little pocket of universe.
Frankenstein drives Dark Spear into him.
He is taken up, and taken in, hastily, food for the ever-starving, not even enough meat to fill the gaps in between their teeth.
When silence settles in the wake of their collective violence, Frankenstein bows his head and sighs away Dark Spear, again tucking them deeply within his soul. They whisper contemptuously away, frenzied with the new piece to themselves, and darkness sheds from Frankenstein's skin. Blinking himself awake, Frankenstein peers around the silent, bloodied hall. Hurriedly, he seeks Ragar, his long legs carrying him almost to flight.
Ragar's eyes open at the sound of the door again, and vaguely, he wonders if he will have to spit out another mouthful of piss, but as his world focuses, he recognizes the silhouette dashing over to him. His eyes blink wide, and shakily, he lifts himself up to sit, his dirtied, bare legs tucked under him. The jacket slides slightly off his shoulders revealing renewed wounds.
"Ragar—Ragar—" Frankenstein frantically kneels before him. He reaches out, not quite knowing where to place his hands as they hover just over his form, as baffled as Frankenstein himself at his state. "I—They..." His chest is squeezing and breathless, his eyes swimming all over Ragar's body. "Oh—" He breathes out roughly, an attempt to steady himself, his face twisting in ugly ways.
Ragar hesitantly reaches up to smooth down his own hair. "I...apologize for my appearance…" he says.
Frankenstein's eyes snap to his. "No. No. You're—" He swallows, mouth tight and rueful. Reaching out to take a hold of the collar, Frankenstein flares with power. It breaks pathetically at his touch, and the pieces fall heavily to the floor. Firmly, he sets his hands on Ragar's shoulder and against his arm. " Oh my god...Ragar," he utters, eyes still roaming his body, cataloguing his wounds and his violation. His expression contorts with barely restrained tragedy. A dangerous, trembling fury boils just under his skin, his breath strained with it, his words cut and stilted by it.
Feeling his powers return easily to him, Ragar lowers his gaze, and with a touch of concentration, he cleans himself. Familiar clothes wrap around his body again, covering him from mouth to toe. On the outside, he finally resembles himself. He stands with smooth, precise grace, startling Frankenstein back, and steps towards the door.
Frankenstein hurries to rise and step after him. "Ragar...you're…"
He shrugs on his jacket. "I am fine." His voice is precisely emotionless, precisely flat. Ragar does not turn to look back at Frankenstein in the eyes, keeping his gaze trained carefully ahead. "Let us go home," he says, as if nothing at all has ever happened.