A/N: Be careful, there's going to be bloodbloodbloodbloodgoreblood in this chapter. Just to warn you so you don't get sick!
The Red Death looked out to the field. The pasture that was once filled with ripe barely, green and ready to be harvested in the fall. But the summer rain that would come to water the plants would be too late. The green field was red with blood.
They sky was red with sunset, it was even stained by the bloodshed caused by him. Workers and field hands were dead, within an hours time for the entire villages and castle around the fields they were dragged here to foul the earth. He watched as his Decay dragged and drove black carts of desolation full of bodies and the dying. They were flung into the tree-less fields, some men and women screaming as they landed on heaps of corpses as fell into puddles of blood. The grass and grain was crushed and made a bed to the sea of dead. The blood was like water and made the rich soil into red mud. Some Decay ripped off people's heads, devouring the flesh and brains and smearing with their talons and feathers blood upon the skulls, sticking them on the fence posts. The wooden fences were painted red; the stone walls were smeared with guts and body parts, stuck into the crevices. Children and babies were stabbed on sticks and pitchforks in the field. Some were even living, crying and sobbing as they broke out into fever and bled from the disease affected to them.
The ground was in layers of dead. It stretched for several miles. The surrounding towns and courtyards of the three barons of the region were in the fields. Not only was it barely, but they were wheat, corn, vegetables, and pasture for cattle. The bovines were gutted open. And the three barons were hung like puppets on their high tower walls, left their to writhe and die as they watched their servants and advisors be dragged off alive or dead to the fields to be cast in to die. It painted the entire countryside red.
He smirked. He enjoyed it. He loved it when he pierced tacks and hooks into the Baron's bodies to make them attached to chains. He personally hung them up to drip blood down to the ground. Their bodies would decay and only the skeleton would be left, hooked to the bone. The muscle and organs would fall off in their decomposing.
His hands were boney and white, the long nails naturally red. But now the skin was covered with blood. He proffered to take his gloves off when he went to crush skulls and rip lungs and hearts out of victims. The guards and cavalry of the barons were no match against the Decay and his power. Most ran away from the plague he carried. One breath or touch was enough to kill within a half hour. But the deserters were hounded and brought to him where he dispatched their lives rather quickly. They were the first tossed into the field.
The cooks, cleaners, servants, pages, maids, animal tenders and such hardly fought against him. The Decay dealt with those by pulling them out to the field, already infecting them and tossing them into the fields. They guarded the fences so they just stood and wandered, and if they passed over the fence they were beaten and bloodied, weakened they were forced to be thrown back in to die faster.
The Red Death tended to the frightened mistresses, ladies-in-waiting and the wife and daughters of the Barons. He cared hardly nothing for a woman. He looked at their figures, their curves and frightened faces and felt nothing but the wish to taste their blood and terrify them. He wanted to terrorize the people of Labaverion, he wanted to add one more thing to the wailing Barons hanging on the castle towers to know, he wanted to show and be ruthless. He knew he was, he was cruel and bloodthirsty as the Gods had made him.
A smirk came to his bloodied lips. He remembered every gorey detail as he tortured the women. The Decay eagerly raped them and mangled their bodies. He himself took the baronesses and their daughters to the Baron's chambers, stripping them and ravenously biting, shredding and bleeding them to death in an orgy of blood. But he didn't satisfy lust. He had no lust of the pleasure of flesh and flesh. This he only desired with a lady, a lady he must stay faithful as a proper gentleman should.
Instead he must satisfy himself by his dark habits of terrifying, mutilating, and hurting people. He sighed in joy when he made men scream like children. There always came a sick and twisted smile when it came to watching children ripped to pieces and suffering in his disease. And nothing, nothing could ever beat the satisfaction of destroying a woman's virtue, whether by his claws in their intimate places or his teeth there. Their blood was hot and sweet and they screamed beautifully. There was something wonderful to him to feel a naked woman writhe in pain as she bled through her skin and from his bites all over her pale body.
The scent of fear was even sweeter than the scent of lust.
He chuckled to himself. They were all dead now, their corpses dragged off the bed and thrown to the hungry hordes of Decay to finish them off and send them to the fields. He had no use for jewelry and such, only the jewels he mined and made others cast himself. The Baron's fortunes along with the rest in the village were thrown and scattered over the remains of the people in acres of fields. Diamonds and gold were stuffed down people's throats. Many of it was horded by the Decay, dragging bags and piles of it to their wagons to squabble over when they reach their master's keep. But now they were finishing the job and he and they would soon leave to his citadel.
He stood still and savored the smell of blood. Buzzards and vultures came to fly near but dare not hover above the field, for the Red Death still lingered. The only birds that were able to feast unharmed were the Ravens. They came in droves, picking at the bones and flesh in the farther fields of the already dead. Here, the only sound heard was the occasional groan and wail of a dying mortal and the sloshing gait as his corvine Decay cawed and grunted in the fields, picking out bodies and choice delicious hearts to dine upon.
The scent of blood blinded everything. But there was nothing to smell but the blood. It was the scent of life, it was the taste he craved and the feel of it warm and salty on his skin and clothes made everything all the more pleasant. When he was alone and with his bloodthirsty demons, then he felt free to be an animal.
During his hunts and in his path of destruction, there was no need to be the cold calculating gentleman that he was. All thought of preserving a stature of dignity and self control was lost. Already his clothes were soaked with blood and his cape dripping with it. It looked like he probably swam in a river of gore. His mask was stained with droplets of the life liquid from his sword, as the blood sprayed from the wounds he slashed open on the soldiers who dared to fight him. His stiff red hat had it's crisp feather slick with it. His hair was matted with blood, the ribbon holding it back loosely holding the hair in a tail.
Today was a good day for him. In a few days he would attack again, only not as harsh and cruel and widespread. More vicious massacres will come in the future, but not now. He would take things slow and painfully for the country.
As he stared out to the field of the dead he felt the presence of his guardians behind him. The 7 Darkness stood and breathed behind him, circled round his still form. Their breath was raspy and their faces hidden in the fold of their red worn hoods. They stood and swayed with the breeze watching The Red Death turn round and face the guardians.
"It is a beautiful sight, my lords. The death and blood here is only a taste to what the rest of the country shall become. Soon the entire land, fields and forests shall be red with blood. The plague shall make this realm uninhabitable for decades." The Red Death said. "From here, the most powerful country destroyed we shall move on to plague the rest of the world. Within a year or more, the earth will be coated red and the sea shall be blood. And there the world will begin again, not from dust but from the pure of life's liquids…blood."
The Darkness swayed and breathed. Mist and demon smoke created a fog around their grouped statures.
"I am honored that you have let me fulfill the doom which you have always wanted. And I am grateful I shall be married to a beautiful strong lady. The power, the strength, I am ever grateful. I am yours to serve whatever task for the cleansing you ask. There is no greater joy than to exact my revenge and bring us to a new age." He bowed and took his hat off, elegantly nodding his head. The head Darkness nodded slowly and rose it's skeletal hand upwards.
"Rise…Red Death…arise, God of Blood." It rasped in slow words. The language was of the demons but all who heard it would understand. Such was the ability of the language and the Darkness that spoke.
He raised himself up and stood tall like the god he thought he was. But his eyes were lowered in respect. These were the guardians. They were the watchers and saw to it his power was used not against them.
"I am the God of Blood. I am the new born lord of the world. I will be god of Life and Death. There will be a middle power from me, my Guardians. It is what the lords of Death have wanted. It is what you give me. I am privileged, my lords, that I will be possessed with all the Gods after the full cleansing." Said The Red Death as he pulled a golden locket from around his cravat.
"It is…as the world…should…" The Darkness breathed together.
"And you have given me the mate of our new realm. She is the one you have promised and made." He opened the locket to show a small painted portrait of the young lady Virginia, age 14. She was sitting in a red dress, her hair up in a bun and wearing a floppy red hat with feathers and a poofy beautiful dress. Her face was dainty and rouged with makeup, the face of a perfect woman, glowing like a goddess.
"Yessss…you will…create…the new world…with her…there will be true beauty from…you both…" They wheezed. "We ssshall see you…home…"
He watched as they turned and started walking back, disappearing into thin air, fading to nothing.
They always did that. They were denizens of the world and filled with almost unlimited power. He himself had yet to properly possess that.
But now he was content and satisfied. He would retire to his castle and rest and plan, and watch from afar when the army finally dares to come near and take care of the bodies. He would be happier then. His hordes of servants now were turning into their shapes of large crows, the corvine creatures into large crows and they flew in a swarm, a flock into the red sunset sky to The Red Death's realm. He would meet them there.
He began his trek over the red trail to his carriage, gilded and golden with red and skulls upon it. The horses were well fed from choice meats and the Decay driver crawled up to it's perch, cawing softly and his belly full from the feast and slaughter. It's stained red rider's hat was painted freshly red from what it ate.
It knew where to take the carriage. The red Death stepped in to the upholstered interior and the Decay screeched excitedly, cracking it's whip to start the horses into it's gallop.
A trail of pointed hoof prints ended in the village square. The carriage had disappeared.
A/N: What a lovely happy little chapter! Haaa, haa.
Shoys.