Speech = ``…..´´
Thoughts = … ...
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….Even a dead man may not have a hollow heart ….
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``What do you want…?´´
``To sleep...´´
His eye twitched behind his mask as he glared at the woman who had no decency to look embarrass or guilty for what she had just uttered
``You jest...´´
He growled, almost a second more later than he would have liked as he witnessed the woman giggle before him.
And yet...he knew that she was not.
The tone, the position of her lips and flare of longing behind her eyes. A nagging suspicion settling at the back of his mind about what kind of slumber she was referring to. One that he was bitterly familiar with too...
She did not answer him either, deciding to change the subject when she noticed his silence.
``So why are you here, strange one..? I saw you take on the scenery…, even try to grab the soil only for it to die in your grip.., but I have the feeling that you are not here for the scenery...for term of a better word´´
If he could have, he may as-well have blushed at it. It seemed that she had seen far more than he would have liked.
If someone were to know about this he was sure he would not hear the end of it.
``You already have the answer to your very own question...´´
``But I do not..´´
She said, shaking her head and with it her long soft her hair followed.
Perhaps she was right, perhaps she was not. He did not care...
``You do..´´
She rolled her eyes.
``Fine I do, happy..?´´
If she was waiting for his response, he would not deign her the privilege to hear it.
She sighed, mumbling words under her breath before she turn around to regard him.
``I am sorry if I caused you any discomfort before…, it was not my intention. I was just merely curious.., not many people wander here these days...´´
He shook his head.
``Your intentions matter little to me..., now dispense with your foolishness and half hearted games you try to weave. Your tricks wont work, apparition..so don't waste any more of your time. Believe, it will work better for you that way..´´
The girl was confused, shock even given the way her eyes shrunk a bit. Her voice though was still rather calm...
``How did you know?´´
``You believe you are the first one to try? That my mind is so young that I could not have been baptise in the fires of madness to see through this charade? Please...you are insulting me...´´
That seemed to appease her for now, nodding her head before she looked at him with a strange emotion.
It could not be respect..
He was sure of it..
``You are certainly...something else...´´
``Most say the same…, until they cant´´
``I see…´´
``Do you? Do you really..?´´
He questioned with flame and thunder as the air rumbled above them, whiplash of air producing a deafening roar as the energy around them was blasted away.
He would be lying if he said he was not growing more irritated with the casual and calm manner she was acting towards him.
It was wrong…
So wrong…
He was not the friend in the other side of your door that you could greet, not the strange yet peaceful stranger you could ask for directions.
He was so much more, and so much worse….
If only she felt fear or hatred of his form he could ignored or forgive her more…strange aspects of her personality, but not even that she would grant him.
This woman…
She vexed him greatly...
``I do...or I believe I do..´´
``That will not be enough, that is not nearly enough…´´
He seethed, his voice echoing as if he was gnawing bones and tearing cords..
She gave him a weak nod
``I know….´´
And for a moment that is all they have to say….
Each of them keeping silent as the words stewed in their minds.., allowing their eyes to continue without voice or words what their stiff lips would not share.
It felt like several lifetimes ago since the last time he had done such thing.
But when she was there….
He sighed, his mind growing heavily inside his skull as he suppressed the recollections that tried to resurface by those thoughts.
Now was not the time to reminisce...
``You say that you wanted to sleep…´´
He asked, his words though booming, this carrying a more softer tone. She nodded a few seconds later, perhaps making sure that she had not imagined the response.
``I did…´´
``Why..´´
``Because that is what I want…´´
``Why me..´´
He pressed harder this time, making special emphasis in the last word. It was clear that she needed him for something.
Had she not, she would have left him a while ago...
``Because you are the only one I can ask to..´´
Ah, there it was...a confirmation of something he already knew or suspected.
That was just great...
``Will you kill me? With that big psyche…? It would be so gruesome….´´
The sudden question throws him to the side. When had they ventured in that direction.?
``I may...´´
She stopped, appearing to be considering his words, as if they were not a barely hidden threat but rather a proposition. Her soft purple eyes closing to a half lid after a decision had been made. Her lips curling up wards with a miserable expression that he had seen before in those that were resigned to their.
``Then do so…, you would be in your right…
...My right...?...
Not that the thought was not amusing on its own, but it felt he was been given scraps than anything else...
A broken toy that no one wanted…
…
How jarring it was to look at her in the eyes...
``Yes, especially after what I did though I can still see a strange poetic justice to be struck with such a weapon..´´
``And what did you do..?´´
She clearly was not expecting such question as if it had literally slapped her when she took an involuntary step back. Watching him as if he had grown a second head.
Or had been the one to struck her….
He was sure he had not asked anything strange, or perhaps...the nature of this realm changed what was supposed to be strange things into normal and vice-versa?
If so….he would really want to kill whoever made this place…
Between wandering thoughts the purple haired girl had managed to get a grip of herself, shaking her head. Clenching her jaw, not angered...but tired as she rose her head to meet his glare.
Her voice tired, almost apologetic...
``Does it matter..?´´
He leaned down, getting closer until merely a few breaths away were the only thing keeping the distance between them.
She did not step back or run away…
He glared back, unblinking….
He would have smiled….
He really would have...
``Yes...´´
She bit her lip, eyes slowly becoming downcast as he witnessed in real time how her head started to come up with a myriad of excuses only to falter and desist at the very end, deflating where she stood.
``….´´
``You are not going to let it drop, aren't you?´´
``You need me more than I need you...so what is it going to be..?´´
He was surprised with how his words came out, almost unfiltered through the mask…
With no small hint of curiosity...
Once more.., time seemed to slow down as silence stretched between them like a thick, ethereal curtain. One so thick and yet so brittle that if he were to extend his talon he was more than sure he would be able to scratch if not shatter it completely.
She would be the one to break it first…, but what she said was not what he wanted to hear.
``I..I do not know´´
He glanced at her, a frenzy need to maul her glimpsed through one side of his mind before it was put down.
But the sour taste in his mouth remained the same...
He leaned back to his original position, pointing a clawed finger at her.
``Then what makes you think you must die with such...fervour. Or are you merely asking without idea of consequence?´´
It was strange for him to be the one to do this…., but yet again, if a monster asked you for death it was not always wise to follow through that request.
Most of the time there was a blood ritual laying not far away...
``I-no..! I know what I want-!´´
``Then speak plainly girl.., you are no longer a toddler..´´
Though that was a rather generous analogy...
``I am definitely not a toddler, I am too many years´´
...On that we both agree...
``You have yet to do anything to prove me otherwise...´´
The look of shock and outraged the flashed in her face was monumental.
She pouted at him…, her face slowly becoming heated, cheeks growing red that would have been able to compete with the blood on his hands.
``I have tried and so I wish I could... I cant explain-... ´´
``Lies..´´
The words cut through the air like a knife through butter...
Her face flinched, the unnaturally soft words that had managed to come out through his filters shocking her more than any of his booming spats.
She recovered rather fast much to her credit, eyes narrowed and lips growing stiff.
``I am not lying...´´
``You are…´´
He replied with callous indifference, yet his eyes glowed even brighter.
There was no mistake of it...
She was lying..
Or at least...she was hiding something from him. Something worth lying...but with such plain yet stubborn posture was never good.
His grip grew stronger over his weapon….
But before he had the satisfaction to see this facade that had almost made him lower his guard peel off like the skin of an onion, ready to see the reveal of the hideous truth that had tried to worm its way in…
She.. she deflated…
Like a balloon if that could be possible.., though not literally. She did not have the magic to do so, even with her existence as a presence belonging to this dimension.
``You are right….
….Eh...?..
`` I thought that I could hide that shame for a while longer.., but you saw through me like a book, didn't you?´´
``I can try to explain...but I lack the depths of the truth with this...fragmented memories. What you must understand is that I have no intention to harm you, or get something from you..´´
``Lies...´´
He repeated mercilessly, though this time...he knew that it was merely a half lie this time.
She did not flinch this time, merely laughing with a dry tone.
``Was I so easy to see? If I could I would be blushing of embarrassment...´´
He shook his head, a raspy breath echoing through metal...
``Lie to me again, and I will take your head regardless of what you may have to say…, good or bad..´´
He was not lying.
Perhaps this way, the conversation could be directed to a more productive direction. That was..as long as she was more interested in her own health than not.
She looked at him, an eyebrow rose.
``You are giving me another chance?´´
``...´´
``I don't know whether to be glad or not…you are more kind than you appeared to be..´´
``Careful, I may change my mind..´´
``…´´
``So, what is it...what is that you want of me..´´
``I want to die...´´
He should have been surprised, he should have at least feigned surprise if only for her amusements sake….
But he did not...
For a single second he did not see the woman that stood before her, nor her long purple hair and her voluptuous and frail body.
But rather himself...
..Don't we all…?..
He thought bitterly, but made well to keep those thoughts to himself
``I want to die, to end this misery...but I am too weak to even grant to myself the swift release of death.´´
She turned around, pointing at the wasteland that they stood upon.
``This place, this existence...is not live.., is torture...even for a mere memory...this is too much. I don't want to live any-more if it means to be chained to this place. My passing should have happened...so long ago´´
``….´´
``Life is pain...´´
He muttered...
``Ain't that the truth...?´´
She replied pained…
The look in her eyes...it reminded him of someone.
``So that is why I am asking you…, whether from the bottom of your heart or the depths of the abyss that has tried to carve its way into it, to kill me.., that you end this place alongside me so that we may dilute into the stream of time like a bad memory at last...´´
Of all the things he had been asked…
Who would have thought that another she would make the same type of request.
Small world…., or in this case universe?
Still, it felt bitter to hear it...
``Why would I..?
``Eh?´´
``Why would I do that for you…, what do I get from it..? Your soul? Your life..? They are already mine, if I wished I could reap it out...´´
He almost thought that he had joked at the last part...
``Because I know that you understand that pain better than anyone.., that you are just like me. A prisoner whose shackles though broken..still cling to you...´´
Whatever bitter smile had started to threaten to form around his stiff, ancient lips behind his mask vanished.
``That you and I are the same…, hoping for an escape to what torments us every waking moment..´´
He brought his whole body round to face her, to look down at her...
``And that we have been left to wander in this finite existence with out direction or purpose as everything else rots around us...while we still remain´´
The grass around them died…., the soil becoming dry and dusty. Everywhere around them in a circular form darkening as an invisible cancerous decease was gnawing and clawing at it, growing larger and larger the circle of emptiness which they stood..
Time slowing down…frame by frame. The echoes of reality becoming a long lost memory as his conscience appeared to see within and outside the boundaries of his own skull.
But not enough to stop the dark, cold and inhuman sound through a throat that echoed with a voice that mimicry at best the sharp, clawing scratches of shards of crystal against a board..., spelling out a sole word that should not have been able to carry as much malice as it did..
A word that only something like him could make even a mountain flinch as it finished to be uttered out through an ancient war-mask that had never cleaned, never polished through never ending butchery.
Shoving the word outside like a slow hiss and yet as fast as if his body was burning hot by their mere touch.
``Yoooouuu…..´´
``Me...´´
She replied like before, the words now echoing endlessly with different tones around him and inside his skull.
``You just said...those words to me...? That you….know me?´´
His words were void of any emotion that was not quivering rage, it was a miracle he had managed to hear himself over the loud throbs of a heart going faster than it should.
Pumping inside his skull blood and adrenaline in absurd amounts..
She tried to speak, but found her voice stolen. Once she managed to recover did only two words came out.
Sentencing her….
``I did...´´
``…...´´
``…..´´
``I see...´´
A hand lunged forward faster than light itself, cold, sharp fingers wrapping around tightly around the soft and blemished neck of the girl.
A short gasp…
A pained grunt
Those were the only things she could do as she was pulled up from the ground with mocking ease as if she was a mere branch the size of his finger on the ground.
Her feet dangling lost in the air as the fake soil became more and more distant from her, her heart beating hard against her chest as the air of her windpipes were slowly being crushed under the iron grip of his hand.
She did not fight him...
The only struggle that he could sense was the way her throat bulged and fight off on its own for the air that it was being denied…and the way her feet remained unable to find a balance to land on.
But as of now it would not have mattered if she had tried to ram a sword into his socket.
His grip grew tighter.., her face losing in the spam of a second a few shades of colour. First pale like a sheet of paper, then crimson…, before ending up in a dark purple shade.
He had yet to fully close his fist and yet her life was at deaths doorstep, a few more millimetres and her neck would snap.
And by the looks of it, he was not gonna stop.
Only a miracle could save her now…, but she had never wanted to survive in the first place...
Nor she would find salvation as her eyes, blurry as they had grown misty with unshed tears noticed the darkness that was slipping out, oozing from his body. As if he was not just a man, an individual...but a collective.
A hive of darkness in which thrived in the form of a man, pulsating through him, moving around each pore of his body and was now becoming hectic at the sight of a new prey.
``You. Don't. Know. me…´´
His voice was the grinding of bitter stonework, a dusty whisper that could not be unheard, a feral snapping bite at the air..
Making the skin crawl of any who heard it.
She trembled, her eyes were open wide, tears sliding down the corner of her eyes and staining her soft cheeks before they disappeared into her thin and graceful collarbone.
Perhaps she would have ran then….
Perhaps all the calmness she had exuded before would have vanished as the revenant that stood before her was done with her games.
But she could not...hanging like a piece of meet in his grip.
She could not fight….
She could not beg…
It would not have mattered, she was too weak to break free...nor he would waver in his heart.
And she spoke….
``Your face…. may be masked, yet….to me it makes all…. the more easier to see….. what lays beneath´´
She said weakly, her voice wavering and struggling to make herself heard…
Completely unbothered by the fact that each word was depleting her already scare reserves of air that were slipping by her soft lips with each passing second.
The agony should have been monumental, to feel her bones quiver and shake like grains of salt as the pressure built up, how blood-vessels broke as they were not giving space to circulate through her veins
But she did not cried out in pain, there was no fear in her eyes…
Why?
Why did she not...?
What was she hoping to get through her resilience..?
`` Is like it is-…. screaming….. at me. The outrage…., the agony…., the anger…all mixed together…. in a volatile pond….. of pent up frustrations….. and the metallic scent of…. blood´´
``….´´
``A shade of never…. ending red…, drowning the soft blue….. violet shades beneath..., infecting it…, tainting it.., bleeding it dry..´´
``Ridiculous...´´
As impossible as it was….
She smiled again at him, a pained, broken smile…
Not one of mockery or smugness, but of pain carved into her mind…, her face grimacing all while she tried to maintain it.
If not pity for her efforts he should have at least show some respect to her conviction.
But he would not, the anger, the shame that were eating him whole would not allow it.
This girl, this thing….had looked into his memories. It had peered through them like they were a catalogue with the help of the confusion of his mind and the aid of this realm.
An insidious approach that had been so feeble, so soft that he had fallen for it in his own arrogance. All in hopes to make her words to sound touching and convincing.
She had succeeded, but not in the way she had hoped...
He gritted his teeth, blood.., his own blood slipping down his mouth and staining his chin for what could have been an eternity without such touch.
Such violation….it would not go unpunished.
``I am…. a ghost…., but I am not…. blind...´´
She said once more, surprising him still as he had believed that he would longer hear her speak again, but he quickly silenced her as he put just a little pang of pressure. The shriek of air coming out speaking that it was her last breath.
He held her still long after that...
He held her as her face finally started to grow black…
He held her as her arms fell limp to the sides of her body...
He held her as the last tear slid down of her eyes and fell down into the ground...
"You never took life without cause….., what changed? What changed my dear...?"
A soft, musical voice reached him. Coming from within and without at the same time, a voice that he had not heard for so long.
Before he realized he had already freed her...
Not even moving an inch to catch her and slow down her fall. Allowing her body falling down into the ground with a loud thud and a pained gasp.
A sign that life still remained within…
He did not do anything else towards her.
He did not spoke, he did not taunt, he did not raise his leg and stomp her pretty little head into the ground to turn it into powder.
He….did nothing.
There was enough for him to deal with what was now plaguing his mind.
She tried to regain her breath, the pained sounds of her breaths making anyone in a mile radios painfully aware how close her throat had been to be come a straw.
It took her a while to regain at least a healthy shade over her face, a bit more to regain her voice…
But she had never stopped looking at him.
He expected her to lash out at him..
To look at him with anger…
For her to raise her arm and hit him with her pathetic body...
But she did not...
`` You have lost, you have suffered….You have met a terrible fate, haven't you...? ´´
He gritted his teeth…
He had not come here to be lectured about hiss soul.
``Silence woman, before it is too late-….´´
``But of the two of us I am at least doing something about it..´´
She said.., a whisper that could have been mistaken by the mumbling of the wind.
The life in his coal like eyes faded, leaving them pearlescent with numbing pain.
The festering wound coming up to life in all its glory deep inside him. Snapping a cord that should not have been touched.
"You know what she is doing, you know what she wants...will you do the right thing..?"
He pulled out the scythe from his back, graving it so tightly that it almost threatened to snap like a twig under his grip.
Will he..?
Will he now...?
It feels like an eternity….
And agonizing wait that feels too long even for him…
In the end he took a decision, he had thrown the dice...now it was in her hands.
``I will be taking your head, now…´´
``F-fair enough…´´