[Scene: A very different place… in a very different time…]
[A man rides a black steed through a landscape dotted with squat stone buildings and crude fences built of crisscrossed stakes. Both man and horse wear full plate armor.
[This might appear to be a scene out medieval countryside, if not for the wisps of flames pouring from the horse's nostrils, the three moons overhead in the maroon colored sky, and the lack of any creature remotely resembling normal earth livestock. Even the man himself is not exactly what he seems to be under his armor, as suggested by his larger than human size, and the narrowed eyes that glow within his helmet, as blue-white as the center of a flame.]
[These are the demon plains, and the man is there to hunt two small children, or rather abominations, as he would prefer to think of them. They are easy enough to track, he just needs to follow the trail of blood and indiscriminate carnage. He looks down as he rides past a creature that looks like a cross between a lizard and a hippo. Or did, before they hollowed out its torso and left just bare ribcage.]
[The man stares forward, his mouth set in a grim line. He recognizes their work. They'd done the same to his cherished little bride, not long after their wedding. The memory of it haunts his every moment, that sweet little angel face, resting in a pool of gore. Golden hair, soaking up blood, with those laughing green eyes, cold and dim like stones. Still beautiful, even in death, fed to them by the mother of these monstrosities in her jealousy, right before she rejected them as infants and abandoned in this godforsaken hellscape, leaving them here to die.]
[Trouble was, they didn't die.]
[A mile further, a wide smear of fresh red leads to a closed door of a crumbling hut. The man's mouth sets into a grim line as he steps off his mount, strides straight to the door, and kicks it in without slowing.]
[The two little monstrosities stop their feasting. The boy had been gnawing on a fist full of some unlucky demon's entrails while the girl had stripped the flesh from its thigh with her bare teeth.]
[They both look up and shriek at him with sharp teeth that come to a point, like the fangs of a dog. They are filthy and they stink, their knee-length hair plastered to their bodies with so much dried blood, dirt, and gore it is impossible to guess its color. The only way to tell the girl from the boy was by her glowing pink eyes and the slightly more delicate point of her chin.]
[Aside from those fangs, they look like two feral but perfectly-formed human six-year-old children. In actual fact, they are far younger. Two, maybe three at the most. He's lost track. It's not like he's been celebrating their birthdays. But the man expected to find toddlers. Not that it makes a difference to him. It just would have made them easier to kill. A miasma of dark energy rises from the both of them, more powerful than almost anything he had ever witnessed, even if they are too young to harness it.]
[Heaven help the universe if these two manage to reach adulthood.]
[The boy's glowing blue eyes narrow into slits as he snarls at the man with a chittering growl. Not in any known language. Just an incoherent baby babble. Nobody ever taught these two how to talk. The girl ducks behind the body of their meal, crouching down as far as she can, thinking it keeps her hidden from his vantage point. Flawed logic, but not bad for a baby. Best to deal with her first.]
[As the man's eyes settle on the girl, the boy lets out a shriek and skitters across the ground on his hands and feet like a spider. In the blink an eye, his teeth sink into the hunter's leg, biting through the steel of his boot as easily as it it were cloth.]
[The man looks down impassively at the pathetic creature trying to chew off his leg. It hurts, of course, but he welcomes the pain. He raises up his mailed boot to pry it loose from the boy's jaw. Then brings it down. Hard. Right into the junction where the boys neck meets his skull.]
[It connects with a satisfying crunch. Like the squashing of a cockroach. The man raises his foot again to deliver another blow, but sees it isn't necessary. There was no way this one was getting up again. The boy is still alive, but twitching convulsively, foam in the corner of his mouth, blood fountaining from his ear and nose. The twitching only intensifies as the boy cries out in pain and terror.]
[Now. To deal with the girl.]
[She's still crouched, those pink eyes glowing with anger and hate, but she hasn't screamed in outrage, shed a tear, or spared so much as a glance in her dying brother's direction.]
[Coldhearted little bitch. Just like her mother.]
[The man reaches back behind and draws an eldritch sword from his scabbard. The girl stares at the sword, and crawls out of her hiding place. She reaches for the thighbone of the demon she had been eating, tears the bone from the last of its remaining flesh and ligament, then rises up on two legs, her pink eyes glowing with hate as she holds the bone aloft to mimic the man's sword. Her little body sways as she takes one unsteady step. Then another.]
[The man let out a cruel laugh at the realization he is seeing a baby take her first steps, only with the intention of committing murder.]
[Behind him, the boy is still crying, only his cries are starting to sound less like pain and more like fear. The man can't help but glance back to see if he is afraid for himself, or his sister. Clearly for himself. His twitching is weaker, his cries fainter, and his eyes stare ahead, unseeing, as his hand grasps for something that is not there.]
[He knows he is dying. These little monsters have caused death often enough that he knows it's his turn now. It's the only thing they've ever really known.]
[The man turns his attention back to the girl.]
[She waivers, her eyes darting between the man and her brother.
[Hate. Concern. Hate. Concern. Hate. Concern.]
[Then all at once she throws down the bone, sinks to the floor and skitters over to her brother on all fours. She stops just short of him and lays on the ground facing him, close enough to hold him, but she merely touches his arm. Then she smiles. An angelic little smile that makes her look like a grimy little doll.]
[The hunter lowers his sword and tries to make sense of it.]
[The crying boy feels the hand on his arm, and reaches out to touch her face, his trembling fingers brushing her cheekbones, and tracing her lips. As he touches her, his cries soften into a contented babble, and he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close to him, bending her back at an awkward angle. He buries his face against her neck and wraps his arms around her as tightly as he can, cooing like a human infant clutching his favorite toy in its sleep.]
[The sword fell from the man's finger as he watches the baby girl comfort her dying brother, the angel's smile never leaving her lips, even while she stares at the man with the deepest loathing.]
[What have I done?]
[He stand there watching, consumed with sorrow and selfhatred.]
[They were babies. Innocent babies. They didn't know…]
[It isn't until the boy's weeping almost fades to nothing, before the man recovers his wits enough to remember he has the power to fix this.]
[He strides over and crouches beside the boy on one knee, stroking the boy's temple with one hand, as he keeps one eye on the girl, ready to restrain her. He doesn't have to. She doesn't attack. She just waits, making no move to defend herself or her brother.]
[She thinks I'm going to kill him. To end his suffering. She knows she is in danger, but she has to hold onto him, to bring him peace. Until the very end.]
[The man gently lifts the boy away from his sister, despite her howls of protest, and into his arms to flood him with healing magic.]
[At once, the twitching stops, the blood flowing back into the boy's skull as the man repairs the damage to his little body.]
[The boy's clever bright-blue eyes open and blink at the man a few times, before they close, and the boy falls into a peaceful nap. Without even thinking, the man kisses his forehead.]
[Sleep well, little man.]
[He rises to his feet, with the boy still in his arms and glances down at the girl. She is staring up at him, sitting with her legs folded under her with her hands on her knees and her head cocked to one side in curiosity.]
[He imagines how she will look as an ordinary human girl, all cleaned up in a blue velvet dress and white tights and shiny black mary-jane shoes, with a white headband atop her long straight hair–which he imagines as a mousy brown…the glowing pink eyes are a problem, he will need to use magic to change their color to blue. Like her brother's…
[No…brown. Like hazelnuts.]
[Any color but green.]
[The armored man shifts the sleeping boy in the crook of his arm, and holds out his hand to the little girl. After a moment of confusion she rises and clasps her little fingers around it. The hate is gone from her eyes. Instead they are filled with confusion. She doesn't understand why he spared her brother.]
[They were bred to be killers. Conceived and trained solely as the ultimate instruments of evil. In their short lives, they never been shown any sort of compassion, nor kindness, nor mercy.]
[In spite of all that, they learned to love each other.]
[This changes everything.]