Speech = ``...´´
Thoughts = [... ]

``I have to admit, I will miss her…´´

That was the first time he heard Alpha speak her mind after the departure of their local princess. The young girls lips pursed in a thoughtful expression as her eyes stared at the shining moon standing still in the darkness that was the far beyond.

Her words were not painted with melancholy or pained…., it was almost as if she had just stated a fact. But her eyes told a different tale..

He would had smiled if he could, so he instead made due with a half done grimace. To think that even now she was trying to be impersonal about it in his presence…., as if the mere thought to shed a tear or show her emotions through her words would be worthy of punishment.

She was diligent for a young girl…, that he will give her credit, yet, one day he will teach her that it was fine to cry.

But that would not be today….

At least, it seemed that the two really had managed to create a bond midst their squabbling…., that was good in his book. She really needed to start speaking with someone else rather than him...

After having witness the carriage grow smaller and smaller as the distance between them grew until it was no longer visible, they had left the empty road behind.

They had not said a word as their feet trod the path back to their little hideout, their boots crouching the dust and flattening the grass under their heels.

None of them had exchanged anything even as they returned to their shrouded village of mystery…, allowing the soft, cooling touch of the air and its whispering to fill in the gaps of the silence that had stretched between them. The stars once again staring down in their cold radiance at the empty fields of the countryside…

Perhaps, it was when Alpha had crouched down and graved the remains of Roses gift from the soil the bandits had stomped with reckless abandon that she had not been able to help herself comment on it.

Ruined as it was, stomped and soiled with blood of those who had tried to destroy it Alpha still held it with the utmost care and respect…clearly trying to repair it, or...she had wanted to put it over her head but his presence had put a stop to that.

After all, he doubted that she wanted him to put that broken thing over her head...

He placed a hand over her shoulder, patting it softy…, or as softly as the clawed digits meant for tearing flesh could allow to. The dried blood glued to each and every talon already dried and clinging to the appendages like paint, but unable to smear over her clothes

She however did not seem bothered by it, merely leaning to the touch. Her ears twitching here and there from time to time, either at the coolness of the touch of iron pressed gently against the warmth of her body or something else, in a way, reminding him of a cat...

``We will meet again, sooner rather than later…, our paths will surely cross again. Do not doubt it for a second...´´

She tilted her head backwards, resting her little head against the lower end of his chest, those blue eyes staring at his while she held the wreath of flowers in her hands, pressing them against her chest. Waiting for him to continue...

``And when you meet, I am sure you will have much to talk about…..´´

``…´´

``That is…. what friends…. are for..´´

He managed to sputter the last words at last once they seemed to become stuck at the back of his throat, contrary to his predicament, a warmth spread in Alphas face as she smiled even more broadly..clearly delighted to hear that, or perhaps making light of the spot she had put him on…

Strangely, he was not as bothered by as he thought he would be like when a certain witch decided to play matchmaker…, speaking of the devil, she was gesturing him to continue on with one hand, while the other tried to contain the smirk growing in those lips.

Looking back at the matter at hand, a reddish hue appearing around the little girls cheeks, whether it was out of fluster or just the light of his own gaze it did not matter, for it was rapidly covered by the loose strands of gold of her mane, glinting with a light of their own under the moonlight as they dangled from one place to another as the wind continued to brush against them.

``I see, then I will wait with baited breath the day that our meeting arrives…, you will be there, right?´´

She started to say with happiness, before her words became a little more weaker, a shadow passing by those bright depths of her eyes. Those little hands gripping over the flowers, fingers stiffening as if the wreath itself was about to slip between her fingers.

Her already diminutive form, appearing even smaller than before. A surprise he had been sure would not have take place, but did nonetheless once more at how sometimes Alpha could switch from being such a mature, small looking thing, to the child she was supposed to be. Would have been….had fate been kinder.

Was she afraid he would not be there...? Did her words carried another meaning to them...?

The mind of a child was not something he had ever bothered to read on, but the seemingly pulsating dread at a negative response was only growing larger inside such petite body. The image present made his stomach churn…, for a moment not seeing the blond elf-ling under his care, but another person.

His jaw clenched, teeth grinding against one another...the sound obscured by the sharp, ghastly breaths pushed through and inside the vox filters...but that did not give pause to his next words.

``I will…´´

Her grip loosens…, her heartbeat halts. The static of emotions giving pause to whatever her little mind could have conjure in that very moment...before once again, a warm, calid touch blossomed inside.

Just like a thick cloud had briefly obscured the nascent sun, its beams slowly, but surely peering through the dark shell around it. Coloring the edges with a myriad of colors...

``You are too kind, but I will hold it to you…., ok?´´

Though gentle as her tone was, there was no room for negotiation in her thoughts. This was a promise...

He merely scoffed, shaking his head in mild dismay while she started to chuckle at his response, raising a hand to wipe a tear that had managed to slip past the corners of her eyes.

``Still, I better not lose my head over the clouds thinking about it..., until then, there is much to be done..and just like Rose promised, I am not going to disappoint either when next time we meet...´´

Was that a spark of competition that had being brought to life right there...? Perhaps his hands off approach had actually worked. A part of him wondered how that had come to pass...though it did not hold much of his attention right away..no matter how bemusing it was compared with the buzzing of the flies flying over the seas of corpses of his own making.

Children….they really were something all together.

``Indeed…, the world will not stop for our whims. We must move forward, always forward... if we are to reach that what we desire...because if we don't, then how would they come to pass...?´´

And those goals will have to start with mopping this world clean of its filth, he did not know how, when or where….but he knew he would do it. No matter the cost….

No matter how long it took...

Ancient bloodlines or simple mixed meat-bags, nobles or commoners, rich and poor alike….they will be judged by the weight of their sins. Their transgressions laid out for the world to see, their ignorance will not be their salvation, but the rope attached to their necks from which they will hang.

After all, it was not the cult alone who had made this world into a travesty of its meaning All it took for evil to take root….was for good men to do nothing.

He finally released her from his grasp, his eyes looking away from her...becoming lost in the empty darkness that had envelop them even though he could clearly see what laid beyond as if it was day itself.

Trying to think, to imagine.., to grasp onto an answer that could give him a way through it…..only for his mood to darken on its own when he found none.

"Strictly speaking.."

He shook his head internally, knowing that there was no point in pushing the matter back any more than he already had.

``Are you certain your answer is definite...?´´

He said, almost seemingly to no one….but not quite. Though he did not yet show it, it galled him in a way that such a small little thing was still giving him such a headache.

He sensed the way she shifted on her feet, how her eyes blinked or the slow, yet clear way her lips pursed downwards into a thin line. Her heart beating a little more faster, yet not an ounce of doubt in her mind..

``I am.., I want to help you.´´

He closed his eyes, almost in a tired like fashion. Their glitter becoming lost in the shrouded darkness of his hood and the empty sockets of the mask.

Of course….

Of course she would say that…, braver than most, but perhaps not as wise. Just like any goodhearted kid when presented the opportunity to do good when given the power to actually do shit...

Hadn't he be any different...? No, he had not…..even though he could no longer remember why he was sure of that. Funny thing, wasn't it..?

He shook his head, dispelling those alien thoughts out of his mind...his glare hardening.

``You are not the first one to say that, nor you will be the last. A noble ideal for most fools, but you may not live to see it through..like many more before you..´´

``To give my life...for something that is greater than I is not a mistake, is a choice..and one that I do not regret in the slightest..´´

He finally tilted his head down to stared right into her eyes. Something stirring up inside..clawing at him, pounding into his chest from within.

Where had he heard those words before..?

Had they been at the steps of the dark throne in a misguided pang of nostalgia about how life had led him to that place..? Was it in the comfort of a burning home, where shreds of his existence became one with the smoke and fires consuming everything? The time he drew his breath breath after his first death..?

At the wake of the war..?

The end of it..?

The familiarity was too palpable to deny it even if the truth remained illusive…, because he knew, deep down he knew that if he had not heard it, then he had uttered those very same words at some point and their taste had turn to cinders in his mouth...

His eyes narrowed to two slits of red underneath the bone and steel, lines creasing the obscured remnants of his face into an inexplicable expression as they chewed and bit on the proverbial, metaphorical slap that had struck him...

If he could do nothing to dissuade her, if he could not change her taken path for as long as he respected her will….

Then there was only one thing left to do.

He would protect her, from them, and from herself if it came to it so that she would never come to regret those words.

He knelt, bending his legs to a crouch as he leveled with her. Casting a shadow over her small, frail form...the light of the night snuffed out as he became the sole point of her attention.

``Then I hope you choose right…´´

She beamed another smile at him, this one rather more shy than the latter, yet no less important. The little elf, stretching a hand forward to tug his arm. Small, slender fingers trying to hold onto the meat render claws as if they were delicate flowers.

``I know I did, because no matter what happens...I will be at your side´´

``And I yours...´´

ºº

Death…

What was death to a soul?

Was it a black screen that consumed the consciousness of the dying? Was it when everything around them stopped on the spot and remained into stillness to infinitum? Was it when they witnessed the entire lives parade before their eyes?

Dolions however...was slightly different.

A constant repetition of the events that had led him to it. Over, and over...and over again. Perhaps the last synapsis of a dying brain that had yet to realize the body it held him had already died, or this was just another bullshit he had to go through even in death.

But it was not like it mattered or had he any say on the matter.

The phantom touch of blood trickling down his chin from still yet to be crushed organs made his skin ache, it made it burn with nerves that should already be raw and burn yet now colliding with his actual body.

It would not be confused for long as he watched the darkness starting to form up forward. He would have scoff, curse and bit his lips if he could.

He knew what was about to happen, what he was going to feel...but he could not stop it, his body just moved on its own as it was forced to repeat the loop as he went through it again…

Slamming into his death, punching it, feeling his fists bleed and shatter alongside any shred of hope he could have held inside.

And then he started to close his fist around his throat.

``Your struggle is futile….´´

Blood started to slid down his neck and down below his neckline where the talons had clawed the skin.

``Your existence, a mistake...´´

His veins seemed to ruptured from the inside, his skin loosing too many shades of color and his eyes becoming glassy as they could not blink, fearful that if he even dared to close them for a moment he would die on the spot.

``But there can be use for your bones still to be found..´´

The voice was akin to a million souls screaming in agony through a furnace of still raging fire. Pushed, shoved into the hungering flames with no compassion or shred of humanity while they burned.

He could not speak back…, not like he would have if he had an ounce of will to do so for there was nothing a man could said or do against the literal representation of a revenant given flesh into the waking world.

The creature did not seem to care...

In an instant, the two of them vanished from the outskirts of the town and appeared floating above the ground. Ten, perhaps twenty meters give or take…it was hard to know when he could not look down given the rigidness that was ailing his neck.

And just on top of the carnage that little monster was wrecking on his men.

A second hand wrapped around his skull, talons clawing and digging into his scalp and flesh. Poking and grasping and pulling his eyelids until the flesh gave in and revealed his eyeballs to the touch of the cool air and the warm flow of his own blood, forcing him to look down into the fight he had tried to avoid.

It had happened so many times that he could already hear the way the flesh tensed and was torn down from its original locations by those pincer like fingers.

``You. Will. Watch. This….´´

The steel screeching sound of deaths voice growled at the back of his skull. Leaving no room for negotiation...and so, watch he did.

The way they fought, the way they shitted themselves…, and the way they died. Like vermin instead of men. They tried to fight, one by one or in large groups at the same time, with despair or tenacity in their hearts, it didn't matter. It just didn't fucking matter...

They all died until none was left...

At first he had been surprised how so many people could die in such a short amount of time, how butchery could be turned into such a cold, mechanized term in such one sided ordeal. Now it was just torture to hear the moans of pain and agony of each and every soul he had shoved into the devils blade..

The scent of iron had became embedded into his nostrils to the point of nausea, he could already picture who or the way the blade had tore through each one of his men by the sound of not their dying throats, but their disemboweled guts when the time for them to hit the ground came.

He wanted to ram his fingers into his eardrums so that he could stop hearing how time and time again they asked for mercy, how they cried and begged for their mothers, their words unheeded by the gods and their butcher.

And then it became his time to suffer in earnest…

His brain started to burn, melt and turn into a puddle inside his skull. Making him relived the worst moments of his life. Making those spots of shame that had been clinging to his soul grow and boil inside as it took something from him.

And then he was discarded.

The sound of his throat giving in and the bones of his spine shattering like glass underneath when the flesh of his neck became nothing but a bloody flesh-socket i indicating that his time of use had come to an end.

It felt like several lifetimes when in truth it had been merely a few brief seconds before his body hit the ground with a hollow thud, like a sack of rotten potatoes that no one wanted…arms and legs bent in angles that no limb should have. Bones protruding from the cloth and skin with the same ease a knife would do through butter, their ebony pale shade tarnished by the feverish arterial red flowing outside...

And so there he stood.

Useless…

Pathetic….

Broken…

A string-less puppet as the world around him dimmed from his consciousness, unable to voice his agony and yet able to feel every ounce of pain searing through him.

All stuck in an endless hence and repeat loop...

He could feel his life slipping away between his fingers, the way his eyes grew heavy to maintain open while his lungs ached and burned as they were deprived of any oxygen they desperate needed, his mouth hanging open, stuck in a grimace while blood flowed through each hole left in his marred and brutalized neck.

If the wounds did not kill Dolion, drowning in his own blood would certainly do the trick. He actually did not know what had actually do the deed in the end. It was hard to do so when your mind was nothing but a puddle of bleeding shit and minced meat.

But after the hundredth time he knew that he would not die. That the loop would just repeat..again and again and again…, bringing forth with each repetition the raw, putrid pain and despair that had tore him without an ounce of mercy.

And it was about to happen again.

The first signs of such thing taking place with the way the world started to grow dark around the edges of his sight…, then followed by the numbness of his body as the coldness finally took control over the last figments of his mind.

Which is why he did not realize this time things were different when something cold, yet warm brushed against his face...like the soft, loving caress of a wife, or the cool touch of the playful wind brushing and touching him one last time.

Then the pleasantries dissipated like morning fog...

Like lighting a lamp inside a dark room where one had been living for far too long without the touch of the light over ones own skin, a stream of energy washed over him, wrapped around each corner of his body.

Chewing him up in their haste to envelop him.

Burning him alive with their mere touch that seared nerves.

Then it pulled him up and down like a rag-doll. It bent his limbs left and right like a children's toy, bones shattering, blood gushing from a million wounds. The sky had turned red, bloodied beyond recognition…, dark as he remembered yet its surface was cracked like the remnants of an endless collections of broken shards badly put together.

Had his mind not remained as clouded as it was by the feverish last shreds of reason and cognitive function that had been soiled and contaminated to the point of no return he would have realized that he was no longer dying in the cold soil of the abandoned ghost town, but somewhere he did not recalled or had the slightest idea what it was..or where he may be.

His curiosity would have been peaked at such revelation...had the agony did not decided to intensity just then. Slamming its way down his skull, drilling into his very being as if the electrifying touch was actually aiming to grab his very soul.

Invisible fingers clenching all over it and pulling it out from the roots, raw...

It may have very well be what happened.

He clenched his jaw, eyes close shut yet only blood. He would do anything for this to stop. Anything at all...if it meant for him to spent the last moments of his existence in peace.

``Anything you say…., dear? Anything at all….? Because if you are, I would be more than delighted to….give you a proposition..´´

A voice whispered and boomed at the same time into his ears.

The words echoing around him, strongly, yet softness carefully intertwined with one another. The tone cold and sharp like a waiting knife in the dark, yet there was a motherly warmth seething out through the cracks that spoke of promises of unending love.

The paradox of the situation he found himself in...did nothing but catch his attention and never release it.

He found himself trembling, his lips quivering as he was invaded by a myriad of emotions that were not his own. And yet, for some reason found himself desiring them. Wanting for them…, lusting after them.

Only to be denied each and every time...

As if bemused by his struggles a soft chuckle hummed then, hands made of darkness yet their touch could only be akin to the softness of silks surged from the ground like snakes. Wrapping around him, caressing him, protecting him in their unholy embrace as they pulled him upwards into the torn down skies that were now falling apart around him like rotting flesh...

All while he heard the soft, delighted humming of a feminine voice that could have been easily mistaken by the songs of angels to him in a language he could began to grasp nor understand…

Soothing the pain from his weary bones. Turning it into nothing, before twisting every inch of his body into the opposite direction.

``You poor soul, cast low like this. You have suffered a terrible fate, haven't you? Do you think it fair? To die here? Like a dog? Put down without a second glance...?´´

Fair...?

He bit his lips, feeling the dry, blood coated flesh numb to the pressure no matter how much he bit into it. Blood started to slid down his eye sockets, staining his cheeks, the taste of iron growing stronger once the red trail reached into his mouth.

Was it fair...?

He grimaced, his face creased with lines to the point they literally marred his expressions to a never ending snarling form as his teeth started to grind against one another. Blood flowing more swiftly through his almost blindsided eyes, his body trembling with no point in sight that it would stop.

Rage, anger and disappointment pushing him, fueling the flames of something new and terrible that was brewing inside him.

No, it wasn't fair…, it felt like everything he had done had meant shit. That his efforts had been meaningless…, while others were able to milk out lady luck for their own schemes. Using him and then throwing him out when he had no further use..

Lord Gaunt...

Loki...

And the rest of the bastards...

``Will you succumb to your fate? Would you accept the judgment laid down your shoulders….or Do you want power to fight against such injustice..? To revel against the dark abyss that awaits you..?´´

The voice returned, turning from its softly demeanor into a weak, playful banter that was whispered right into his ears. The sound too sweet to ignore, too tempting to deny..nor like he would have.

And soon enough he found himself balling his hands into clenched fists.

Yes…, that was everything he wanted. The only thing that had actually mattered and remained the same inside his mind even now.

And he would give everything for it.

His service...

His life…

His soul if it came to it...

For some reason he felt that she, whoever it was…where she was, was smiling in return at the decision he had taken inside his mind. Like a strict parent watching from afar the decisions of their spams, taking for the first time pride in their accomplishments.

The pride, the acceptance, the appreciation….the thought almost disarmed him.

He almost could feel the razor sharp teeth scratch at the back of neck, long, cold claws brushing and rubbing against his arms and chest as a sultry voice that now echoed through rock and stone, flesh and time itself made its way into his very soul.

``Then come child, join your voice with mine…..and sing victory everlasting...in the name of destruction´´

The last thing he saw before the darkness claimed him were a pair of glowing, massive tear shaped eyes that glared him through the endless void, bathing his meager, broken body in their orange, reddish ethereal light…

A pair of bleeding stars that would forever burn in the madness of obsession, filled with nothing but an unending hunger...

ºº

A/N

Here comes another chapter, I hope you like it. And so...it ends here, this is the last chapter of this arc, I believe it was long enough to settle a few things into the story, so that we can now start progressing more in another direction.

Dolion is still alive, eh? Well, I hope this deal of his doesn't end up backfiring horribly...but hey, one can dream, right? Right?

Feel free to comment to give some feedback. Any commentary will be appreciated.