CHAPTER 6

Run to red hill

Out of nine, only four of the bandits remained. Markle was tightening a belt around the severed forearm of Remus, but the makeshift tourniquet was little help to him now. The gaunt look of his face gave away the fact that his legs stood shakily on borrowed time. He wailed tiredly to the sky "damn it all, damn it all…" while the others caught their breath and looked around suspiciously at the tall grass for another ambush from the monster.

Mack, and Dellim argued between each other about how it all went to hell so fast, and tried to blame their way out of whos fault it was. Markle yelled to stop the fighting, but he had barely the strength himself to break up yet another fight among themselves. the only thing that stopped the men from trading blows with each other was a sudden black bloom forming in the clearing with them.

They gasped and shut their eyes, now knowing that to stare directly into it caused madness. Lorno had looked into it when they were first taken, and the poor idiot hadn't been right ever since. The old man in the red hood flourished out before the darkness disappeared. Markle shot up before the old one could speak.

"Remus ain't gonna last much longer, he needs a doctor. We've done e'ry thing ya asked, N-Now let us all go!"

The old man turned his head to one side and glanced around at the haggard men, then centered back on Markle. He smiled,

"Why?"

Fury burned in the bandits eyes. They had all been stolen off the road with only the food and water that they had strapped to them and through lack of nourishment, tempers and patience had finally run so thin, it affected their judgement. The old man had slit the throats of two of their compatriots for being too weak to continue. The bandits knew of his power and cruelty. They had endured and feared it, but no more. Markle continued,

"God damn you! Let us go! All of us are starvin' tah death! I saw my brother get eaten by a damned giant dragon, and I've had to string up women and children on spikes for god knows what reason! I killed men, sure, I killed 'em for spots a' coin and even less than n'at. But I ain't never done that to no children, ya sick son of a bitch!"

His parched throat caused his voice to crack and break from fury into tears in a matter of a sentence or two. His knees buckled and collapsed on the ground. Precious liquid streamed down his dirt streaked face.

"My soul ain't never gonna leave this place. My eyes is gonna see home, but my soul ain't never gonna leave this place now…"

After a moment, Aurfeht stepped forward and bent his head down to Markle, who's fiery speech had degenerated into religious mumblings. The old man peeled a cracked mouth from his teeth, afraid that the words may catch on his lips and sting.

"Your god abandoned you. He's dead. I killed him."

Markle looked up into Aurfehts eyes, trying to find something human within them.

"But I am his merciful steward."

A sudden pouring of hot liquid down his chest turned Markle's expression into one of surprise. He would have gasped, had his wind pipe not been severed as well as his carotid artery. Aurfeht didn't even wait for him to succumb to his fatal wound before shoving him into the dirt and stepping over him like a lumpy rug.

"Ohwell, playtime is over. My toys have run their course."

The others weren't given the luxury that Markel had of any last words. Aurfeht simply outstretched his hand and drew out what little time they had left, leaving their bodies to wither and blow away along with the dust.

"waste not, want not." He chuckled to himself. Without another glance back, he disappeared back into a dark void and was gone.

Jagus Unim, having crawled hand over hand to regroup with the rest of his bandit party, saw the entire scene behind the grass. Sweat beaded down from his forehead and stung into his eyes that reactively teared up. Atleast, that was the excuse he allowed himself. He looked at the body of his second in command Markle, and clenched furiously at the ground only to have the powdery dirt sift through his fingers.

†

Both Dragon and horse thundered across the grassland, paying little heed to the winding road, deciding instead on cutting a path of their own. The "race", as it where, drew to a close as they crested the top of the last hill. The smell hit them first; An odd smell of old death wafting gently on the wind like anemochory seeds. The scene that came was far from a prize.

It was a familiar sight; The old caravan. Dirty and worn hand painted lettering across each oversized car displayed the kitchy language of the theatre.

"STUPENDOUS FEATS OF COURAGE!" "HORRIFIC EXPULSIONS FROM HELL" "TERRIFYING AND MAJESTIC CREATURES!" "DANCING VOLUPTOUS BEAUTIES!"

Crete couldn't believe her eyes. Some 50 yards away, down where the earth became level again, was the Bedlam Outlands Company. The very circus that she had fled over two weeks before and left several hundred miles due south was now nesting out here in the middle of nowhere. There were definitely hover cars and flying ships still in service that were easily capable of covering the distance, but those were hell and gone from the slow moving caravan. With heavily reinforced construction to withstand attacks, the converted military rail cars sacrificed speed for defense.

But it wasn't the cars that spoke of horrors or death. They sat still and quiet, acting as a mere curtain backdrop for the scene. Anchor posts from the tents had been snapped in pieces and thrust into the ground like rough fencing, their tips reaching jagged into the solemn breeze seemingly inconspicuous, were it not for the bodies that hung suspended on them in the space between the earth and sky.

D marched his horse down the gradual slope as the carbuncle started his protesting. "oh my favorite thing in the whole world: walking into a trap! Yes, that's exactly what the crazy man I'm attached to would do."

"We're already ensnared. Forward is the only way out."

"I'm just saying those bodies don't look as dead as they should be. Not if they've been here as long as that bandit clown said, roasting on spicks in the sun for a week...still awfully fresh, don't'cha ya think?"

Spread out several feet apart from each other, it was a simple manner for D to weave his horse between them. The deathly look about them was fresh, but the smell of their blood that had dripped down the poles and onto the ground was dark and sour. Something did seem odd.

A faint snap, inaudible to most ears, caused him to halt just as he passed the last row of bodies.

"Behind you!" Crete's voice echoed from atop the hill, watching with apprehension. D didn't turn around. He waited until a faint shadow touched his own. The draw and slash of his blade was quicker than any human eye. The only evidence of his action was the heavily pierced head falling from the shoulders of Percible the Professional Pinface. As if his skewered corpse didn't already have enough problems, his body tumbled backward with a hard thunk. The rest of the bodies suddenly began to fidget from their posts, air escaping from their cold lungs in dry rasps as they pushed themselves up to the ends of the rough hewn spikes and dropped carelessly into an unsteady scramble towards the horse and rider. The ones nearer to him reached out to grab at his horse and coat only to have their limbs fall to the ground, cleanly severed at the joints.

He leapt from his horse in a backwards somersault. The acrobats would have been impressed had their heads not just been severed. As soon as his feet touched the ground, all of the them descended at once. From down below and up high, the rotten carcasses seemed to launch themselves at him with a vigor that was hardly characteristic of the undead. Flashes of silver fanned out among them, causing the bodies to slide apart and topple to the grass in gory clumps of flesh and tacky costumes. Each wave of attack was sent flying back, slashed at the neck or bisected from navel to nose with surgical precision.

When the last of them moved no more, D slung the blood from his blade in one motion, the red liquid beading down the edge and falling off obediently. A shuffle caught his attention to his right and he watched as the bloated corpse of Faustino, a snapped off pole jutting from his stomach shuffled towards him through the carnage. His massive size had delayed his reaction to join the frenzy.

"Guess this means we're not gettin' paid now..." Muttered the left hand, dejectedly.

D waited for him to get within striking distance. A looming moment of calmness for D and an inevitable second death for the circus owner. Within twelve feet, Faustino's glossed over milk-white eyes turned surprised as a thud jolted his head. He toppled forward to the ground; A slim dagger sticking from the back of his neck, effectively severing his spinal cord.

Crete was standing nearly 30 yards away, her arm still outstretched from throwing the deadly weapon with impressive accuracy. D regarded her with a slightly disappointed turn of his mouth, "I could have dispatched him without assistance. You didn't have to interfere."

She sauntered over and took the dagger from the back of his head, and with her foot tossed him over so that his open dead eyes stared up into the sky.

"I needed to do it. It was the least I could do for all he had done for me. He was kind to me, you know. A bit of a greedy bastard, and only wanted Doco. No other act in the world had a tame dragon, after all… But still, he knew what I was and took the risk any way. He never told them I was a dhampire. I wonder if he knew how all of this would turn out, would he have still kept that secret?"

D slightly bowed his head. "What's done is done. There's no point in thinking about it now."

Crete looked across at the fallen bodies of her circus comrades. The faces of people she had boarded with, and worked beside now lay in pieces. Just like the rest of her life.

"You're right. The only ones who knew were Faustino and Althea and now they've paid the price." She spat bitterly.

"She isn't here." D didn't have to do a second check to confirm his remark.

He remembered the young girl Althea, with her green eyes that held no fear of him as she approached out of turn, during D's questioning of some of the performers and workman. An old woman had hissed at her in a thick accent, as though she were trying to curtail the actions of an ignorant pup. The girl addressed him with an urgent tone, knowing full well a lashing awaited her for speaking with someone of cursed blood.

"Please," she had whispered desperately, "Please believe me. No one else will. Crete didn't kill people-She didn't have to! I scryed those ropes found on Rei'el and an evil thing did that to her. Crete has a darkness in her heart, but not evil like that. You mustn't kill her. Promise me?" D asked precisely what she had seen and she told him that she could only discern snippets. She could feel the girls fear and terror, and knew that cold pale hands had tied her up.

"And is Crete not also pale? Cold by nature? Most dhampires are, child." His guided questioning kinder to Althea than it had been to the others he had spoken with. Althea seemed distraught that he was also attempting to talk her out of what she knew in her heart to be true. "Please don't hurt her, sir- Just…Please don't! She is my friend…" Tears formed in her eyes as she was snatched away by the old woman who leered untrustingly at D, muttering incantations to ward off darkness and evil. The old woman and the rest of the circus had their fill of dhampires and rightfully so.

Yes… He remembered her tear stricken face of courage, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her corpse was not among those that littered the ground. Crete slowly met his gaze, cautious to allow herself a sliver of hope.

"What did you say?"

"The fortune teller's daughter. She isn't among any of these people."

Crete had begun to search the grass and the half-rotten faces buried there before a chilling voice tainted the air. "That's because I wanted you to watch while I kill your favorite, Amun bitch!"

On top of the caravan Aurfeht stood in his red tattered robes and bare feet. His old face creaked with a smile that seemed stapled at the corners like the hinges of a door, opening to yellowed and rotten teeth. He held a girl with a large blindfold that covered most of her face, in a tight grip with one hand and in the other held something thin and metal to her throat.

"Althea!" Crete called out. She knew by the stiffening of the girl's stature that it was indeed her. Aurfeht cackled with a raspy voice, shaking the dust from his lungs, "I've been waiting such a long time for this, Amune Crete. Traitor of the House Vidraru- Traitor of the Sacred Ancestor! It will be an honor to destroy you in his name!"

"You speak of the Sacred Ancestor, as though you were graced with little more than his boot lickings. Spare me your righteous indignation, Aurfeht." Crete regarded him as garbage and spoke with a tone worthy of any noble. A clever act that covered genuine concern for the girl. Aurfeht leered with an upturned eyebrow and a coy jeer,

"Better his boot than his knife, 'ey old friend?"

Crete's narrowed eyes at the sting caused him to toss his head back in a hacking laughter. Only when he cackled himself into a cough did he notice that D had stealthily leaped to the other end of the car and had begun to walk towards him as a stalking shadow.

"Eh!? Stay back, dunpeal dog! I'll kill this little wretch if you-"

"Come any closer? You killed the others with less provocation. That gives me very little gaurantee you won't kill her if I do as you say."

"You want to take that chance, pretty boy?" Althea stiffened with pain. The small bead of blood that curled down Aurfeht's paper-thin fingers as he pressed the blade into her neck still wasn't enough to stop D in his tracks. He ignored his question.

"I'll give you one chance to-"

"To what!?" Aurfeht guffawed at him, "To negotiate!? Hah!"

"…To escape alive."

The wisen old man jerked the girl into a tighter grasp in front of him as he took a step back. A sudden fear set in as his naked heel felt the edge of the car, and realized there was no where to go. This frightening shadow of a man shot Aurfehts hostage idea full of holes in the blink of an eye. D had honestly no remorse for the girl, should she die. The old man never was much of a strategist, anyway. His silver tongue went into quick action.

"What do you care about any of these fools? Circus folk-A dallas a dozen! What do you care what we do to that traitor bitch over there for that matter, Hmm!? "

"I don't."

D's cold answer caused him to crane his neck back in surprise. He was beginning to feel the dark aura that emanated from D as he took another step and reached back to draw his sword. The killing lust emanating towards him was unlike that of the Lady Arges. Almost a shade deeper, if a thing was possible.

"Eh!? I'll kill this girl! Don't come any closer! Why would you want to kill me? If you don't give a damn about any of this, why get all pissed at me, huh!?"

As D narrowed his sword at eye level and pointed it at Aurfeht, an unfamiliar raspy voice that seemed completely out of character for the young man replied,

"Because you screwed with our money!"

Aurfehts eyes searched him confusedly for a moment. The lapse in resolve was all D needed to secure a direct hit. The old man was quick, and used Althea as a human shield, covering his emaciated frame with her body. D predicted and compensated, landing the point of his blade right underneath her armpit and into the solar plexus of the red-cloaked murderer. In the instant the sword made contact, Darkness erupted like a fireball around them, and Aurfeht sank backwards into the black pit with a smile on his face.

It was the same kind of warp that D had seen at the waterfall, and it made his eyes hurt to look into it. It was unheard of that someone could control such a space to his advantage. Althea was shoved forward as Aurfeht descended into the void. She fell into the arms of something hard and comforting at the same time. Her small hands clasped around D's bold upper arm.

"Mr. Hunter? Is that you?" She whispered greedily for comfort. Glancing down at her long enough to see the wound at her neck was superficial, the young girl was met with an ungracious stumble off the roof as he pulled his arm free of her grasp, and pushed her off the edge.

"Woah-Oh!" She exclaimed as she came in abrupt contact with another familiar body. "Crete!" Althea exclaimed happily before she even pulled the blind fold off to see her friends' stern visage. Just as quickly as she had set Althea down, Crete opened the door of the car and shoved her in.

"Open this door for no one." She commanded before the girl even had a chance to utter a single word of protest. There would be time for a reunion later, she thought, perhaps even time to ask for forgiveness.

The tall woman ascended the rungs of an inset ladder with one arm and a strong jump in a blurry cloud of gray and white. D was looking at the point that Aurfeht vanished.

"I landed a deadly strike." He muttered, deep in contemplation.

"He abuses time. Stealing it from here and there to fuel himself. It's impossible to kill him, and even if you did, he'd just use his last ounce of strength to reverse it again..." She said helpfully.

"No." D turned the longsword over in his hands, "The bodies must have had their blood mixed with some kind of dulling residue."

"How can you tell? Are you sure you weren't just too slow?" She chided with a sideways smirk.

One moment Crete was looking at D's back. In the next, she was facing him, the brim of his hat obscuring his face from the nose up, the taught curve of his lips visible. His longsword poised in both hands. Only when he lifted the steel from her neck did she feel the slightest release of pressure off the high collar at her throat. She breathed out as her fingers touched where the hard steel had been. Not even the fabric had been cut.

"Still think I was too slow?" D remarked as he put the sword back in its sheath. He made several graceful leaps up to the main engine car without another word.

He could have sliced off my head had he been wrong. Crete thought. So fast... So impossibly fast…

Aurfeht reappeared several cars behind her and called out,

"I'm tired of your games, Amun. Give yourself up, and no one else needs to die! Of course, it doesn't mean they wont, but who's keeping score on these things, anyway?" His macabre joke was enjoyed only by himself as his cackle echoed off the metal rooftops.

"Yes. If we were keeping score, I'd still say the odds are in my favor. My players are all still on the board, and your already down a bishop."

"Don't give him too much credit. Malthesic was more of a knight, really." Arufeht tilted his head to one side in contemplation.

Crete gave a casual sigh, "It doesn't matter. You're all nothing but pawns to her, no matter what you consider yourselves."

"Atleast being considered a pawn is better than never being considered at all by the Lady Arges."

His heckle was cut short by the slender hands that ran along black sheaths behind her. There was a certain mischievous look in her expression as she said "Oh, I think she considers me a great deal. Especially when I still have these in my possession."

Aurfeht growled, "I'll skin you with them myself!"

"I'm afraid someone may have a problem with that." She responded, ignoring his raw temper. The old time ward didn't seem to notice at this distance that their sight was not quite lining up. The grin remained plastered on his face as they each bided their time for the right moment.

"Problem? I see no problem in taking out the trash. You know, Amun, I do miss the old days. The days when you were wild and unburdened by human guilt. The things I saw you do still gives me chills! I always wanted to know: What happened that changed you? What turned you so goddamned pathetic?" He asked, licking back the curiosity.

Her slow hop from one car to the next betrayed the urgency of her beating heart. "I suppose you could say time finally caught up with me." She answered with a slight shrug of honesty.

Crete made it a point not to look at the black skulking body of Doco behind the Time Ward as the dragon hungrily made his way closer, quietly emerging up on an open platform that linked the last two cars together. Aurfeht didn't seem to notice. His eyes were glued to the steps she took that slowly closed the distance between them with the utmost caution. Aurfeht certainly didn't live this long among nobles without his razor sharp paranoia.

"Time, yes... It catches us all eventually." his smile faded, "All of us!"

His haggard remark twisted in the wind as he whirled around and stretched out his hands.

In a solid wave, darkness ballooned around the open platform behind him. The original train car that had been there was torn down to a bare shell that kept the tools and stage wood that didn't mind the elements. In a flash, he reversed time and transformed the car into its original heavy artillery shell. The act was miraculous, and even more impressive in that he succeeded in trapping Doco inside it at the same time. The Dragon roared angrily, cramped and confined in the tiny space. For a moment, Aurfeht was pleased with himself before he realized he had left his back open to his true enemy.

He didn't dare waste precious seconds looking behind him. Instantaneously, he delved into another conjured dark void just as the swipe of Crete's dagger made contact with the back of his red hood.

"Bastard." She muttered as she looked at the dagger's blade. It was the same one that had pierced the neck of Faustino's undead corpse. Sure enough, she had sliced through the air with enough power and accuracy to end him, and yet not even the fibers of his painfully worn robe had been cut. She assumed he had mixed some sort of dulling agent with their blood and re-injected it into the corpses. No wonder the blood smelled odd.

The roof beneath her feet suddenly jolted violently forward, testing her balance. The hem of her caplet billowed up from the sudden surge of howling wind, obscuring her view. Waving it away, the countryside was suddenly whirring by at incredible speed, only it wasn't the rolling grasslands: It was bare meadows nestled between juts of rock and stone. Even a different sky was overhead.

The questions on her face spoke for her, and the rhythmic rumble of train tracks underneath gave the answers. The entire caravan had been plunged back in time to the age when it had originally been a military train. The metal alloy beneath her feet shone with a gleam the likes of which not even bird droppings had yet to touch.

"Well, well! I barely recognize the rat trap! All gleaming and shiny, just like a proper noble artillery train should be. Heehee!" Aurfeht's disembodied voice sent a peculiar chill up her spine. In the thousand year war, Nobles fought relentlessly. The weaponry created to defend and kill were numerous and inventive. Nobles especially didn't appreciate hitchhikers on their train system, and sensors removed them immediately. The portions of roof that rose slightly and revealed high powered laser cannons pointed directly at Crete would see to that.

†

D had suspected this might happen. He had heard of Time Wards but hadn't encountered one of Aurfeht's skill in quite a long time. He must have been one of the true old ones: Once a powerful brotherhood that served the powers of darkness, the origin of the Time Wards was as mysterious as their skill. It was rumored that very little was known about them because they erased their own past, eradicating any potential knowledge to usurp their power. The old man had done the impossible, placing the entire cast inside of a moment in time. A memory within a memory; A prison within a prison.

A feat like this couldn't possibly be easy, and it certainly couldn't be permanent either. Time was fickle that way. Though the blue sky overhead looked normal at first glance, it seemed almost painted on like a fresh mural on a decaying wall. A great breath of energy had been forced in to create this bubble within a bubble, and D had a feeling that time was running right back out again. The world had been off ever since they entered the middle of the grasslands. Crete may have been too preoccupied to notice, but it was something people with this talent never seemed to account for, and D paid careful attention to: The wind.

The wind told the truth. It had no morality, loyalty, or master. But it was ally to those who bothered to listen. D pulled a stuck leaf from his coat and released it into the noisy gale. The dry brown leaf cut a path directly to the side instead of behind him and vanished instantly.

"Looks like if we jump, we'll be negated into our basic particles." Announced the gravelly voice in his hand.

"Swallow it." D commanded without hesitation.

His left hand balked at the idea, "Excuse me? I'm gonna need one big damn glass of water to get something like this down! Besides, this train is too big. I can get you through, but everyone else is screwed unless you figure out a way to make the whole train completely weightless for a second."

D looked up at the curve of the track as it bent around the side of the mountain and

over a bridge scaling across the steep valley gorge nearly a mile away. A sudden thunderous crack shook the heavens. The blinding light of a high power laser beam pierced through the clouds above and collided with the bridge, decimating it into a symphony of explosions and melting metal. The track was demolished, leaving the train only minutes until it's demise. The laser most likely came from a rival Noble, bent on starving his enemy of supplies. This must have been the reason why the train had been given a second life as a roving caravan: it had met a gruesome end in its first life at the bottom of a three thousand foot drop.

He raised an eyebrow to the impending doom as he muttered, "Lifting it off the track might do the trick." D regarded his hand sternly, "you're timing is going to have to be beyond impeccable for this."

His left hand chuckled, "don't you worry your pretty face. You just get me what I need!"

†

The last of the roof cannons shrieked with an electric buzz as tendrils of lightening lashed out reflexively to the crushing stomp of Cretes landing. She crouched atop it momentarily before leaping backwards in a graceful vault. Though every action timed precisely, and every movement intentional, the smoking soles and clean burn holes through her cape made it clear that it had been no simple task to dispatch laser canons. Aurfeht had busied himself by pulling his roughly hewn knife through her skin, organs, and tendons, only to disappear before receiving any reciprocation. His damned cackle was almost as annoying as the painful wounds that laced across her body. Blood soaked through grey cloth that slowly stitched itself back together again. The wounds themselves did not weave back so easily.

Her haggard stance bore the mark of a warrior worn threadbare and finally fell to one knee. She caught her breath and looked over her shoulder to the caravan behind her. It rocked violently as the dragon continued to desperately break out of his metal cage, despite it being impossible for even a creature of his strength to break through nearly a foot of dense metal alloy. He must have been terribly cramped.

Be still, Doco. Un'trava le'durn us…

She tried to still him with her thoughts, but she could tell he wouldn't be in a state to listen. The very nature of a dragon preferred the wide open expanses over small corners and stuffing him like a boney meat sausage into a hot tin can was not going well for the beast. Like many of the worlds untamed wonders, he wasn't meant to be in a cage. Any powers that ever forced their will on him were always met with vicious retaliation and fury. It was in his nature to always be free. How could she quell that which was so close in spirit to her own?

Aurfeht reappeared before Crete, but said nothing. His eyes lapped up the pitiful sight of his enemy in disarray. A ghoulish smile crept along his face, and with it instilled the same dragging ebb in her mind. The feeling of being trapped was like drowning without water, a desperate scramble for life and living: Not unlike an inconsolable dragon clawing at her insides to escape…

Somewhere in those rotten teeth and parched dry smiling lips, she could see the hard truth that Aurfeht would never stop. There was no reasoning with the likes of him. There never was. She closed her eyes, heavy with the weight of resolve as her mind drifted.

This is where I take one more step towards my own death.

With a sharp catch in her breath, she rose up and swept her hands over the handles of the two crossed swords at her back. Thin fingers clamped over black handles in a steely resolve.

"You think you're so fast, Aurfeht. 'As fast as time itself' I heard them say once."

She wanted to look down her nose at him, the way that she knew always irritated him about the Nobility. He flipped the small blade in his hand like a baton, mocking her expression,

"Here and there, they say that. But I only have to be faster than you, poppet."

"But are you faster than your own fate? Are you faster than the hell that has been waiting for you-Chasing you all these years?"

She smiled a bit then. That wry half smile that hid self-doubt so cleverly. A smooth 'click' sounded as the wakizashi-style blades were loosened from their snug sheaths, like the 6 shooter of a lone gunman ready for the 12 o' clock bell. His ears focused on that sound as it seemed to stretch on in the instant it took for black ebony blades to shoot out from their sheaths and fly towards him at incredible speed.

This is where it hurts.

His smile diminished slowly. All he could see was the gossamer blur of grey and white and black. He felt a horrific pain in his gut, even as he sank back into the rip in space the blade seemed to almost carry with him, even though he was certain nothing but himself could travel in the spaces between. With a wave of his hand another hole spat him out on the roof top a cars length ahead, but this time he stumbled out instead of his usual grand entrance. He clutched his stomach and pulled away from what he felt there. His hooded eyes stared for a moment in awe of his own blood: More of a coagulated molasses of slime, than blood. Like that from a corpse… Like that from the corpses he had- No! He thought. He wouldn't have this, he refused! This is not how reality works, This is impossible!

He looked over at Crete, who stood hunched over. Not from pain but from possession. Her face told a tale of pain and terror but more than that, of pure elated joy. Her face had twisted savage with hunger. Her lips upturned into a smile broken and bleeding from the pristine sharpness of lengthened canine teeth. A faint red glow emanated from the pit of blackness that engulfed the whites of her eyes.

"What's wrong?" a silky voice carried across the howling wind just for him to hear clear as day, "Did I cut you?"

Aurfeht could feel the stiffness and gut wrenching pain of the thick fluid beginning to course through his veins. It was the terror that the circus folk must have felt. He could have killed them all mercifully, but he hadn't. He had ordered those bandits to impale them while still alive with poison-tipped spikes and laughed as they wriggled in their death throws like fish bait. As the toxin ripped through their bodies, turning their blood into mush and boiling their brains into flesh hungry monsters, he took a genuine joy from their misery just as he always did. If this was a start to his own personal hell, he had at least come by it honestly.

He could swear that he began to hear screams in his head, but not from his own memory: from theirs. He tore at his red hood and clamped his face between his hands in a desperate effort to make it stop as the wails became louder. He looked at Crete. He looked into eyes that weren't hers anymore, but those of a demon. The weapons in her hands emanated a dark presence and he knew were somehow the cause of this agony.

Suddenly the car pitched to the side as a shock wave jolted the train, snapping Aurfeht out of his misery long enough to look ahead and see the engine car dip over the edge of the broken tracks. They were thousands of feet in the air high above the center of the canyon. The end was near for all of them, and his face twisted back in a grin of madness.

"Guess it's check mate, Amun! I'll at least live long enough to sift through the pieces to claim your head as a trophy!"

Her head tilted to the side as she rolled the word in her smiling red mouth. "trophy…" It was barely even her voice anymore. What came out of her mouth spoke in a tone that had been given a most extraordinary idea as she looked over the size and width of his head.

Aurfeht threw open his arms in a desperate plea to call forth an escape portal, but let out a piercing shriek instead. He looked down to see the broad muscle bound body of Jagus with a pig-sticker in his hand, plunged straight through the top of the old mans foot. He must have ran after D and Crete and stowed away on the train without any of them noticing.

"This is for my brothers, you sum bitch!"

Aufeht took his withered hand and snatched it hard around Jagus's wrapped and bloodied forearm. The hulking man cried out, instantly reminded of Crete's previous punishment. He yanked the man up with a force surprisingly powerful for an old wretch and sent him sailing to the other end of the car.

"Little meddling prick! Away with you!"

Jagus made a guttural noise as he slammed into the metal roof and rolled off the other side, seemingly to his death. Down below at the beginning of the plummeting train, seconds before it's date with destiny in the icy river, a gravelly voice yelled out,

"This is gonna be rough! Get ready!"

His left hand was clenching the metal of the train with such force as to leave indentions on the alloy. The fingernails digging in like rocks ebbing the flow of steel water. A flame had appeared in the center of its tiny mouth before attaching itself like a suckerfish to the metal. A fateful kiss of luck and supernatural mystery that bore the weight of all their fates.

This is where you die

Possessed by the blades that shook violently in her death-like grip, Crete burst into a dash of lighting speed. Her arms crossed each other at the precipice of a graceful leap towards his head. Had he a little time to recognize the familiarity of it, he would have remembered this image: People with their arms pinned at the sides by grey and white jackets with nothing but animal ferocity in their eyes to stave off the madness of infection; the curse of the once bitten, slaves of the Nobility condemned to "camps" and "sanitariums". The ones who had bore witness to the depths of true darkness, and not the strength to retain the knowledge found there. They were pitied, but not feared. Not by the likes of Aurfeht. Certainly not like this.

The old time ward tried to escape but his foot was pinned by the blade, that married flesh and metal with a blooming pool of crimson. The carts of the train began to fall one by one as they careened off the tracks and into the thin blue thread of river hundreds of meters below. Crete brought the blades down scissored against each other. As they began to slice through either side of his neck, the cart became airborne. Time slowed to a single moment of pain, savagery, death, and weightlessness. Their eyes eternally locked in this place as victim and victor. A blinding light enveloped and erased the world, turning it pure again.