Eternity

[Arkash]

As the bolt struck the ground, Arkash was made to flinch. A moment of hesitation he'd come to regret as the dust and debris that kicked up in the impact clogged his view. He covered his eyes with a forearm, aimed with the other, fired, and missed. The etheric projectile landed at the foundation of a near building with a blast that again, made the Rath reel and shield his eyes from debris.

By the time the dust had cleared, she was fully standing before them. Arkash prepared both his guns and took aim, only for her to disappear. Lightning struck Taelian, and the metallic woman appeared before him. Arkash took aim but knew the cannons he wielded would injure the Godling too.

He stayed his weapon, even as she threw the bladed tip of her weapon into his chest. Arkash flinched. His fists clenched, but he'd seen Taelian do worse to himself. But as the arcs of lightning ran through him and she lifted him off the ground, he began to shake. The ethereal gauntlets in his hands rattled as he stared wide-eyed at the display. And as the acidic mass burned his features, Arkash screamed.

"STOP!" He cried in futility. Tears welled in his eyes and streaked down his cheeks. And when she was done, and Taelian's skull was bared, Arkash tried for the cannons that stuck from his palms, to find that they'd disappeared. Shakily, he turned his hands over to inspect the scales there, and then looked at Taelian's body on that Halberd before she threw him off and struck him again. "NO!" He cried.

Wide, tear-laden eyes stared down Taelian's corpse as it laid in the rubble; his broken form, the hollowness of his eyes. Arkash trembled and quaked in a toxic cocktail of emotion while his mind ran its fastest in a vain attempt to grasp what had happened. Just like that, Taelian was gone.

"You fucking... BITCH!" He roared. His fist clenched, and from Taelian's wounds, he threw spears of blood in her direction. The attack was of no strain on his soul; it was the product of his Blight.

His scales turned pale as his eyes sank. The depths of his pupils burned blood red as the yellow of his irises misted grey. His jaw popped and relocated to make way for monstrous, jagged teeth that burned with freezing black flames. Dark quills grew from his neck and hands, and dagger-like claws of jet-black keratin and rambunctious black fire extended from his fingertips.

Right there, he split his wrists and held up his arms so that his blood ran down his forearms. And at the pain, he roared a low, broken howl of rage.

With inhuman, supernatural speed, he kicked off the ground and rushed toward the Draedan. In his pursuit, he threw a volley of hardened blood scythes from his arm, weaved to the sidewalk, planted his foot on the curb, and launched himself at her from the flank with his burning claws aimed at her head.

Midway through the leap, he launched another volley of blood scythes from his other wrist to pincer her with an attack from above and below.

Image source.

[Moop]

¤

The young gnomish woman stood in quiet thought, staring directly at one of the curious signs. Frozen there, hand on her chin, head tilted sideways, she marveled at the strange hue, something she had never seen before with her own eyes. Unbothered by the withering city or the husks around her Moop was simply transfixed by the sign itself and trying to make out its purpose. She walked nearer to the light, a moth drawn to a flame, and stumbled; falling into the brightly dressed husk and subsequently being covered in ash. She coughed and sputtered, trying to desperately wipe away the powder on her body. It was disgusting and frightened her to be covered in someone's remains. As the girl coughed a bell tolled, sending a shiver up her spine as the remaining husks skittered towards darkness, cowering from the noise. With little time to think or react she stumbled away, back into the middle of the street, to see what could be seen.

It would seem those who had been assembled at the priory were here with her now. The one named Taelian cried out in horror, calling this a nightmare. Moop was disoriented and confused. As the bell tolled it spelled out a name, then lightening struck. It was crimson and frightening, but Moop stood her ground. Large brown eyes watched intensely from the back as Taelian released his wings and explained to the others their new found abilities. She gulped, forgotten, but what else was new for the girl? Perhaps, though, indiscreet she had an advantage. While the others prepared for battle Moop wandered to the shadows, the cracks and crevasses where the husks had come alive. Reanimated from their previous stupor she tried talking to one, a male, her tone cordial but kind-- as if she were speaking to a child.
"My name is Moop. You are a being of magic. Tell me, how can I help you, frightened one?"
While it was risky what she had done, not knowing whether the creature would attack her like this monster who rode on lightening.

That was when the most inconceivable thing happened. From her vantage point off to the side, not hidden but not with the main group, she saw the woman strike the ground and beheld her clearly for the first time. Dead was the only way Moop could describe her, and yet, she emanated a power the gnome had never seen before. Her eyes glowered and glowed red as she repeated the word "virus" twice. She threw up blackness and rode lightening again. Moop flinched, blinking, frozen, watching as the halberd pierced Taelian's chest and Lyria lifted him into the air, torturing him with lightening. She put her mechanical hands to her face to cover her eyes but couldn't look away, wishing she had more hands to cover her ears from the horrible screaming, peeking between the fingers to see at the end Taelian nothing but a puddle of goo and a skull.

The one named Arkash, the curious one from before, had become some sort of lizard monster and clearly possessed magic of his own. He roared and made Moop flinch, she stood there in shock for some time watching the battle unfold around her. Nervously she felt an urge, the curious urge that reminded her... She too was a mage. Unable to melt people with vomit or conjure weapons from seemingly nothing there was one thing she WAS good at. And that would be throwing rocks. But simple pebbles wouldn't be enough to harm or even bruise a being like Lyria. She had an idea. Instead of throwing stones she would aid the blood scythes Arkash had created. Sending her weave forward she wrapped as many of the scythes as she could, the ones being projected from the bottom, with her weave and sent them hurtling towards Lyria with as much force as she could aid. Her weave was visible to the others and had a rainbow pattern to its glitch.

She felt good, she wanted more, and couldn't help but laugh in spite of herself. Skipping rocks in secret may never satisfy her truly again.

[Ford Edevane]

It was going to be a fight, one that not everyone would survive or at least leave unwounded from. Ford and Taelian had discussed what would happen and should happen. An idea of what would have been. Ford even knew what he would do if it ever boiled down to that decision, which he had made since he knew their goal.

The red lightning crashed, descending from the heavens to the ground. The vibrantly red lightning that scattered from her form had scorched its bolts along the already darkened streets. The blonde could feel it, the impending danger that was coming for them all. The greyed-red gaze had followed her, from the lightning scorching out to the blackened pus that escaped her throat. It was a display of how far she had fallen or how far she had gone. Both sides work in their current predicament. Before the Griscian could react, the lightning struck from where he had been standing and disappeared into it, the direction of the lightning striking where Taelian was.

Move him. Pull him. Change places with him. You’re the expendable one, not him!

Ford’s head had just begun to turn when he had felt it. It was an unexplainable sensation that the man had felt. It was as if the purest diamond, the most luminescent precious stone, filled with light and reflecting utter and complete brilliance and beauty, uttered a single sound. It was minor, small, and inconsequential to most. It was the lightest tink. The smallest imperfection had been created on a previously pure canvas. A perfect tip of a sapphire had just been chipped. The smallest granule went tumbling into the deepest reaches of nothingness.

Move!

It did not matter. Ford was moving fast, even for someone of his size, but he was not Draedan-fast. As his head turned to finally catch sight of her, her halberd had already penetrated Taelian’s chest.

Tink

The luster of the sapphire had begun to fade. What had been a small, tiny ding in the gemstone, otherwise imperceptible to most, now had a crack running along the top portion of it. It still held together, but it was in dire need of repair. Smaller fragments had begun to crack from it, but the main body, although less incandescent, had found begun to find a new dullness in its radiance.

BETRAYER

His body had finally turned so he could move in her direction, and what he saw next was the last moment he saw his husband drawing his last breath. As the murderous mass rose from her mouth and vomited across his face, it melted his flesh, leaving his skull with red, burning flesh left across it.

Crackling Clinks

Moments ago, what had been a brilliant sapphire, luminous, lustrous, perfection to behold and covet, was cracking through the mid-line of the sapphire and through the rest of the once vibrant stone.

With one last flash, Taelian’s body went flinging from her halberd, another strike of the lightning.

The sound of shattering shards tumbling to the ground. The incandescence of the gem was gone, and the coloration of the gem was nothing but charcoal black. The smoothed, shined edges had grown coarse and less distinct. What had once been made complete had been shattered into nothing more than a husk.

As the gifts from Taelian’s Channel Divinity faded, the glimmer of life and the light in Ford’s eyes dulled. For the briefest of moments, Ford merely stood there while Arkash called out in emotion and began his attack on Lyria.

…Meanwhile…

In an ocean of darkness, nothing stirred. Not a light, not a breeze. Life had ceased to exist on whatever plane the canvas had been pulled across. In that silence, a hungering void was quickly indulging in its ravenous appetite. Despair, helplessness, torment, and numbness spread out like a virus. It was consuming the space that the precious stone had once shone in its admirable brilliance. With a faint flicker, two masculine, almost foreign voices rang out. Excuse me… The memory rang out within Ford’s mind was attempting to recall memories and make peace with what had just happened within him. A deep sapphire-colored mask and a near-white, even ivory-colored mask danced in a courtship around one another. Music echoed out in the loveliest of symphonies. The pair of masks came together, covering so close the noses of each visage nearly touched. Two voices rang out as, for a moment, both masks tipped into a near-horizontal fashion.

Hello.

As the final word had been uttered, both masks slowed their courtship, the music faded, and the colors in each mask began to bleed from them. Their colors ran from each mask into puddles of bubbling ichor that seeped back into the darkness that surrounded them and once more…

Tink. Crackling clink. Shatter!

The masks crumbled to the perceivable ground and vanished from sight.

In the present

While Arkash was beginning his actual attack, Ford’s lifeless gaze remained on the corpse of his husband or what had been left of him. His hair had not quite regained the blonde, Griscian luster it had had prior to the current events. In that time, his hand had lifted and gripped at his own scalp, his blunt nails digging in against his own flesh. It wasn’t merely a scratch or an attempt to rid himself of an itch. Knight Argent strength was applied to the fingers, tearing at his scalp, causing blood to leach from his scalp and soak into the small clumps of his hair. Unconsciously, Ford’s body was attempting to stop what was about to happen to him.

As his fingers delved into his own flesh, something else occurred

Once more, the darkness had returned, only this time, it was not silent. There was a sound, faint but distinguishable. Darkness for as far as the eye could see, but one could also swear sounded like a crackling fire was nearby, but there was no glow and no smell of anything burning. As the deafening silence had the faintest of fire crackles, there, once more, were two voices, foreign, matching the same from before. Only this time, they spoke in unison rather than speaking to one another. Bidh fuil a’ sgaoileadh eadar ar làmhan, a ghràidh. Doirtidh fuil o tholl mo chrìdh' an uair a bhitheas tu air falbh — fuil a' fol- achadh do m' innibh, agus tha mi a' crìonadh. Is tusa am buille a tha mac-talla tro mo chraiceann. Is tu m'fhuil-sa a ta sruthadh, 's a treòir.

The words had begun soft, but as they spoke in unison, the pair's intonation and reverberation had grown near deafening until the sound of glass shattering resounded all around within the darkness. The words would not mean anything to anyone. But they had meant something to Ford. Upon the final echo of the words, something fell from the darkness above and landed roughly with a clattering clank. A simple knife, nothing of note. Equally of unimportance as the words, unless the knife’s true meaning had been known, had fallen with a loud noise to a seemingly hardened surface. The blade began to melt away, from a silvery coloration to a crimson hue, only to turn into a blackened, evaporating mass. The handle disintegrated into nothing, flowing into blackness.

Your knife is gone.

In an outward motion of both sound and movement, Ford finally seemed to be coming to the present.

Blood stained his right hand as he had effectively torn the flesh on his scalp. The blood began to slicken itself along the right side of his head, dripping down into the ashen blonde hair, staining it a deeper crimson. Unknown to Ford, tears had begun streaming down his face. It was a guttural sound, a sound that no human should ever have to or be able to make. It was a sound from deep within his core that could never be resonated again.

It was not heartbreak that Ford had felt. It wasn’t even merely the loss of his husband and everything else Taelian had become to him. As Ford’s face grew paler, despite the emotions running rampant throughout his mind and his nerves on fire in his body, there was a pain he felt. It was a pain that found itself deep inside the body, so deep he did not think it would ever have a beginning or an end. A wound had been created that was unhealable.

…When Lyria had decimated Taelian’s body. Cut through him, even shot that crimson lightning into his body. He had felt it starting. But it wasn’t until she had scorched and melted his flesh from his head that it happened.

Lyria had not only murdered Taelian. Her halberd, ichor, and lightning had struck a second target. With Taelian’s life drained from him, Lyria had effectively and literally shattered the soul of one Ford Edevane. His mind, body, soul... His Psyche was irreparably damaged. What had been Ford Edevane interlaced with Taelian was a shattered pile of soul fragments, unable to be pieced back together.

…And a single emotion consumed him from that vast emptiness he felt within. In the moments that followed, there would be no light. Instead, Ford felt nothing but vengeance and murderous intent for the first time in his short existence on Atharen. His veins ran cold. His heart was beating for no one, not anymore.

And unless Lyria moved away from him or to Arkash, he would at least attempt to reach out in an attempt for two things. As his near slate blue gaze, wet with the shed tears, turned a knife’s edge on Lyria, even if it meant he got hit by the combination of Arkash and Moop’s attacks, he was going to hold her in place and make sure they hit her. And if attempting to grab her failed, his right fist, the one stained with his blood, was sent for her head. Without restraint, without care of the damage it caused to her or to him, he allowed whatever strength he had in that Knight Argent mutated body of his scream forward at the excuse of a head of Lyria seemed to have. Because if he could not hold her, he could at least attempt to distract her long enough.

[Gloomcrest]

Despite conjuring up one of his Compasses at the ready, and feeling the surge of abstract power flowing through his veins, the brief flash of red, cascading lighting would run across the battlefield. Then, in mere seconds, a lady would appear, her same body subjected to things unimaginable to one’s psyche.

Lyria’s voice, croaking and bubbling with ichor, would strike a chord of fear that stirs deep from within Jared’s soul, merely saying the word ‘Virus’. As she stood tall, her pale blond hair, which was slightly mattered, and her pale skin, essentially the colour of bone white ash, was something the thief had never seen before in his history of living.

As Lyria continues to murmur in her soulless voice, merely a husk or a puppet being controlled, the thief tries to react but feels his muscles freeze… For a while, the Alistian thief has experienced fear, the levels at which he could at least move or flee from the scene. What was happening now was beyond mortal fear; utter terror is the best that Jared could describe the scene. Yet something odd echoes out that the thief would note, Lyria or whoever was making use of her body merely croaked out the word ‘son’.

A single word, yet from what Jared could see with his citrine-coloured hues before another flash of red lightning would zip through the blackened, empty streets and just like a moment or how a single grain of sand would come to pass through the hourglass. Lyria would merely scream at Taelian as a betrayer before the light was snuffed out by a wave of her hand.

Taelian was murdered on the spot, his body withering away as decay would simply follow, leaving behind more than bone that slowly erodes with time. His cries of anguish would linger longer than Jared would like, and it did not help that his mind replayed the scene repeatedly. The searing burn that would echo inside his body was no longer an absence of cold remains in its place.

For all intent and purposes, Taelian was gone, and it was now just Arkash, Ford, Moop, and himself that remained. From those vengeful eyes that Lyria would strike upon the group, the mere gaze would turn over to Arkash, who would begin his bout with the Draedan of Light. Using a barrage of blood, his form changed to resemble much of a monstrosity.

So much was going on that the thief in question didn’t even realise that his own body started to pilot itself, desperate to live; For indeed, Jared was afraid to let go… He had yet to discover what he was as a person or what fate had installed for him, was he destined to move the world, one stone at a time or dissipate into the ethereal like the rest?

Moop, standing quietly in thought, would come back to it; It must have been a shock to witness a person dying in front of their eyes and seeing Ford in distress was not making it any easier on the thief. Nevertheless, Jared would do what he could to assist in trying to get everyone out somehow…

As the thief tries to move, a wave of pain runs through his body; the thief screams in agony as he attempts to use his Nightfall abilities. His soul is exhausted, yet to recover from putting much strain. Collapsing onto the floor with his hands over his chest, the thief would toss and turn on the ground as the pain became unbearable to manage.

His vision blurred by the cascading alabaster light that shone across the barren wasteland; Jared wanted to help so desperately, but his soul was at its limits, his mind racing millions of a second as his life would begin to replay itself in this terrible moment; Lost, paralysed with fear, and suffering from excruciating pain from within was all the thief could do now for all his struggling to cling onto life was at this point in vein.

[Tyranny]

THE DEFILED ETERNITY

Ash, 109.

"...For as the sun weeps for the moon as it leaves, I weep for you, my Starling, each and every time we part ways."

"Venadak," Saren whimpered, rubbing his fingers over the tears that dripped down from his eyes. "I love you, dear. I always have."

"I know, little Starling," the golden Knight replied. "I love you too."

- - -

Emotion so raw as Arkash's, and so utterly entrenched into the soul as Ford's, should have had a power of its own. Perhaps, if Venadak was truly a God of Justice as He proclaimed, the world would have been engineered that way: the rightfully sorrowful and victimized would have the power, innately, to seek their revenge... their blood-curdling howls of sadness manifesting as lashes upon the skin of their aggressor; their tear-swollen eyes manifesting in clearer sight. The world they lived in, though, and the creeping veins of the underworld beneath it... they were not designed for justice. They were designed for souls: planted, grown, ripened and harvested. What good did 'Justice' do to sate the hunger of a God?

Arkash was a hungry ravener, voracious as the creatures who made him. Lyria, too, was hungry. Hunger was perhaps the one thing that did truly forge power in their broken land: the hungrier the mouth and the more and longer it ate, the greater the hand that it wielded. Venadak and his kin were hungry; the Leviathan was the hungriest of them all. It consumed, body after body, until it was strong enough to remake the landscape of a galaxy... and in its own way, end it all.

And that, really, was the thing -- wasn't it? That level of power and that degree of longevity... it didn't exist in a vacuum. It was crowded by other beings with their own little lights, their own little trinkets they called their bodies, empty vessels that had eaten so little and were not allowed to live for long. Taelian had only just begun to feed his Divine Spark, Arkash had only just begun to live as a Dranoch, but Lyria had been hungering for a long time... thousands of years, taking and taking and taking. At the end of it all, what was she if not a sommelier of men, the way they tasted when they bled?

...Taelian had only just begun. He'd never had the chance to come even near to what she was -- the Warmonger of Bel, the greatest of them all.

And so, emotions didn't matter. Heart didn't matter. Friendship didn't matter... love didn't matter. A bond forged in the stars or in earthen mud, it all meant the same; flesh was flesh, bone was bone, atoms were atoms. Electricity coursed in and around Lyria's form, before utterly surrounding her; the blood scythes Arkash flung at her boiled and became flaccid, dripping onto the ground as mere splashes of scorched ichor. It didn't matter that Moop hastened them; an impenetrable aura of electric force was just that, impenetrable, its physical boundaries unmarred by friendship or collaboration or coordination.

They had never had a chance, and what little hope they had was gone as Taelian had been flung from Lyria's halberd. As Arkash launched at her, he would be met with that truth: the moment his leap culminated in nearing her, he would have a silver colored tendril-like spike impale through his face, piercing through his brain and leaving him limp on the ground. Lightning struck him, and he burned into nothing: ash, cinder, waste.

She looked to Ford.

It did not matter that he was enduring, surely, the greatest pain he had ever known... and would ever know. As much pain and sorrow as he felt, the Father's contempt was stronger than all, and it was blind. Emotions like his were barely even perceptible anymore -- perhaps Taelian would have been heartened by them were he alive, but what lingered was a smoldering corpse, and a woman with no imperative but to kill. So... she did just that. Ford made it to her, indeed, and he even managed to force his way through her electrical field, being shocked and burnt his way through. He managed to touch her, for but the briefest of moments, before she swung her halberd at an almost unrecognizable speed and chopped his hand clean off. Blood sprayed, but what followed wasn't long after: she swung her halberd once more, and Ford's head was cleaved from his shoulders. He joined his husband in the pile of bodies, the woman picking up and tossing him onto Taelian's already withering corpse, as Bel's infinite mold appeared to have begun growing through it.

She looked to Jared.

Pain. She could see that he was in pain, and to her, that was a weakness. His anguished screams were a part of the chorus and choir; like Taelian as he died, like Arkash and Ford as they mourned his loss, and now Jared as he felt his soul throb and wither in vain.

"...Co...cocka...roach..."

His Umbralplasm melted. It failed to even truly manifest, falling limp just as Arkash's blood had; whether because of his Mageblight or because of Venadak's influence over Nightfall would perhaps be an unknown. Like with the Son of the Tarnished Creator before him, Jared met the woman face-to-face in a flash of lightning, and as she appeared before him she knelt. She lowered, and lowered, until the cage-bodied woman was eye-level with the broken Nightfallen, and she breathed out against his skin. Her breath boiled him, forming explosive bubals of corrosive rot, which exploded and tore his features apart, his mind corroding as the lobes of his brain were obliterated one-by-one.

And then she looked to Moop... the last one. She had chosen her foes through malice: those who had transgressed the most were chosen first, while those who had drawn the least of the Creator's ire were spared seconds longer. Perhaps it was an irony, that, given that the survivors only had to deal with more trauma and pain... but this was His Justice, after all, so it was always destined to be demented and wrong.

"Good...bye..." she whispered. The sky still throbbed, lit with red lightning, the flare that loomed above never truly fading away. It shaped itself into something almost like a spear and formed together as one mass, looking down upon the Gnome from above. And with no particular warning or grace, that red lightning descended... and as all faded from Moop's eyes, she would feel nothing but burning pain.

- - -

A scream. A harrowing scream, more wild and vicious than anything he'd ever let out; he writhed, rolling in bed as his body spasmed, and he cried painful tears as he whimpered and mourned.

"No... no... no...!" Taelian sobbed. "Ford... Ford..."

Everyone would awake in that moment, though it wasn't a dream they'd had. No -- none of them would have felt it that way; everything that had just occurred had been entirely real, every sight and sensation felt. Everything they'd gone through really had occurred... in some way, but not yet.

His wailing continued, louder and louder... and in the sky above the Eternity Priory, lightning really did begin to form, and rain fell and poured. Taelian sat up and sobbed harshly, rocking rapidly back and forth, inconsolable.

Everyone could feel it seared into their minds: Lyria's face, Saren's mask, Rot's corpse floating in the fish bowl. They would know, somehow innately, what that was.

Their future.

Saren had given them a single strand to look upon and admire, and that strand was one that contained their end.

[Arkash]

Arkash could feel it.

The raw potency of their grief, rage, pain, and loss. Its effects on the body were tangible in the air for the Dranoch.

His body felt to weigh nothing in his mad dash for vengeance. Claws bared, maw aflame, and eyes burning with tears, Arkash threw his attacks in vain and leaped his killing blow. He saw the world fast enough to see her weapon thrust toward his face but wasn't nearly fast enough to stop it.

Everything went black. He didn't even feel whatever his fate was.

He shook tremors as the darkness of his eyes gradually bled away, and in its wake was the room he'd fallen asleep in, within the Priory. He stared down the length of his pale muzzle, freezing blames plumed toward the ceiling.

Arkash shot up in his bed. The stink of sweat and struggle was rampant in the room. The Gnome and the human stayed asleep while Arkash's burning claws felt his head, the space between his eyes. "Bitch..." he muttered, voice raspy, shaky.

He gnashed his horrific jaws together to test his teeth, then withdrew his Cardinal features. His scales turned back to their basalt shade, his eyes yellowed, his jaw set back in place as his teeth shrank to regular proportions, and his claws withdrew to their natural size. The cold fire dissipated, and his body resumed its natural masquerade.

His trembling hadn't stopped, and his thumb felt over that space between his eyes. Confusion rampant in his gaze, he shook his head and threw off the covers. "I need a fucking helmet," he muttered as he threw his feet to the floor and began to dress in his furs and leathers.

Coin purse secured at his hip, he looked between the Nightfallen and the Gnome before he turned and dragged his tail through the door to the hall.

Was there an armor smith in the monastery? He somehow doubted it. Did he have time to find one in Daravin? Unlikely. Would a suit of armor even save him?

Arkash stopped there in the hall, leaned against the wall, and shut his eyes. He turned to plant his back there as his legs weakened, bent at the knee, and he slid into a heap on the priory's floor. In silence, he held his head with both hands and stared manic at the mosaic tiling of that particular hall in deep thought.

Tears wettened his cheeks, and his palette pooled with venom, which he slurped and swallowed.

In the window ahead of him in that dark hall, his reflection stood fully to face him. There it was, as he'd often seen it. All over him was deep, crimson red, hardened, and shell-like. It covered his left eye in a grotesque mass of gore, dripped at the jaw with the lifeblood of his foes, and smiled at him. Arkash hadn't stopped trembling since he woke, but with his next realization, he fell still.

It was his turn.

Image source.

[Gloomcrest]

It all happened so fast, but the sensations were all too real in his eyes as the thief could only stare at the figure that was looming over his wretched, damaged body; the recollection of screaming, dying breathes was all that it took for the thief to try and move away from Lyria;

The witnessing of seeing Arkash fight for his life with every tool he had on hand and Ford’s mental fortitude snapping before his eyes scared him more than ever; Jared was more than afraid, instead this moment in his life, the tapestry or chapter that he assumed he had control over was, but a mere illusion as someone else was able to cut another’s threads so easily.

Nevertheless, her final word struck a chord in Jared’s soul, the one that was putting him through so much grief… ‘Cockroach’. Lyria merely stole the sun, stars and the crescent moon from every sky, extinguishing them with a monsoon. The light that once burned bright was replaced by darkness, an emptiness Jared had always feared.

That mere word summarised Jared’s entire life in his personal opinion. Nothing more than a tiny thing in Atharen, nothing more or less with relatively no value to contribute. A searing pain would strike through his body; the etched memories of being nothing more than dust scared the thief so much that his death caused the thief to scream frantically.

Jared would desperately cling on, struggling to breathe as his body slowly melted away from Lyria’s breath, clawing onto the ashen ground. Wanting to live for, he needed to figure out who he was; afraid to die alone, to merely starve like the child he once was back in Alistian and drift off to slumber filled with anguish and nightmares.

“NO NO NO! I CAN’T GO; I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM!!!”

The thief’s eyes would open abruptly as he began to flail in his bed in sheer panic before a wave of pain struck through his body; the tightening sensation would rush over his body which caused further agony for the Alistian thief as he reached for his chest, clutching so tight as if he felt a panic attack settled in

All of the frantic movements would cause the thief to begin bleeding through his nose and eyes lightly before finding his body becoming weaker, his once pale skin darkened in large patches of purples and blacks that would run along all over his body in various splatters as if someone dropped a can of paint of his body.

His erratic movements would cause his body to fall rather violently onto the ground as he continued to scream in sheer terror, as his body would bruise easily from the solid impact against his weakened body from the mass accumulation of Mageblight over a couple of months.

Despite putting on a stoic appearance, Jared was naturally insecure about his place in the world. This mere moment whatever it was, reaffirmed that he was nothing more than a roach that served no purpose other than to be an annoyance across this blighted world.

Jared’s thoughts continued to race as his breathing became more erratic, his screaming became hoarse and dry as the memories of those moments back in Bel kept playing on a loop inside his mind.

The more thief breathed, the tighter the pain would feel along his chest before it was too much, forcing the thief’s mind to recede into itself in a way for his body, soul and mind to protect themselves. Quickly falling limp on the cold stone floor as his thoughts linger on who he is and if he truly deserves to live briefly linger before darkness claims him.

[Ford Edevane]

It was too much, too much for anyone to bear. No matter the pain and skill that Arkash wielded, Lyria was on an entirely different level from the group, even Taelian. They had attempted, despite being outmatched, despite their losses, despite the pain they had felt, too, at the very least, wound her. With the lightning field around her, Ford’s hand lunged at her. It did not matter. If he could slow her down and distract her, even for a moment, anyone could have done something.

As the flesh began to burn and peel from his arm, Arkash was dispatched without a care of a second life being extinguished. Through the face, Ford watched another lose their life to Lyria’s. Impaled through the face, the squelching thwunk of Arkash’s flesh impaling upon the halberd was another that Ford would have immortalized in his mind.

In those final moments, before Lyria turned her gaze upon him, Ford had felt the end coming. There was an ease he felt, almost relief that the pain he was feeling in those moments was about to be released. Even though it had been mere minutes since Taelian’s death, the pain was excruciating. It wracked his body with a pain he understood he could never experience again. Even his flesh burning from the hand that had come into contact with Lyria held against her for the briefest moments could not compare to his torment. It would not matter. Actions failed. Ford only had two things left to live for. The first was to die at the hands of Lyria, and his soul was extinguished from this realm of existence. The second was words. Ford had always been good with words. He excelled with them quite well, even if it would not serve in certain situations. In the current moment, it would matter little, but he had something to say, even if she could not hear them. He would continue with what strength he had left in the hand that had touched her.

”You are the betrayer. He was the best of any of us.”

His hand was severed from his body. The blood sprayed from the wrist stump, his hand falling, but he did not relent. The pain he felt in his arm was inconsequential to the rest.

”He is the best of the Children of Venadak, even y—“

The Griscian’s head was cleaved from his shoulders, and his body tossed upon Taelian’s. Lifeless, cold, dead. It was fitting how things began and now ended with the pair together. If Ford still had a mind, he would have something anecdotal to say about the universe and souls and the like.

Next was Jared, then Moop. Eventually, everything ceased, and there was a brief lull. A darkness, a familiar darkness. And he heard it.

Someone was crying. Why were they saying his name like that? Who was lamenting his death so vividly?

It took the blonde a long moment to realize he was stirring from sleep, a sleep filled with a sense of realism, that when his eyes opened, the slate grey had remained in his eyes, and he felt lifeless.
Who is crying? Why are they so sad? Something terrible must have happened…

And that was when everything compounded into one thing. The pain he had felt in Bel. The soul-wrenching pain. His psyche had shattered into a million pieces, and his heart ached and clenched in on itself. Taelian’s body, flesh burnt, sundered, fresh in his mind. He tried to breathe, even forced himself to inhale, and he, the blonde, found he could not. He began to choke. Something was lodged deep in his throat to the point that his face was turning a deep shade of red. At that exact moment, as every nerve fired off, the man realized he was in a bid and rolled onto his side, and a violent heaving occurred. His abdomen tightened and even twisted, and his diaphragm expanded and contracted. It was a dry heave at first. And again, and again. Finally, upon the fourth and fifth gut-wrenching twist of muscles and organs, the bile caked into Ford’s throat was expelled onto the floor. The congealed mass splattered to the floor in two takes before, once more, dry heaving returned. The muscles along his body had tensed each time so painfully that it felt like a spasm was rocking its way from the tip of his toes to the top of his head.

Only once he could breathe again did he roll back onto his back and realize someone was crying. Turning his head, he saw his husband, unmarred, unburnt, and a new pain filled him. It was a burning sense of relief that was combating the pain he had felt from the Arlaed bond being severed. He sat up, his body drenched in sweat, his face lined with tear stains and fresh ones, and… Ford did the only thing he could do. Taelian was beside himself with pain. Ford had been as well. Taking in a deep breath, the movement of air stinging across the afflicted flesh from the captured bile and he moved himself to sit beside his husband and did the one thing he could control at that moment. Sliding a singular, muscular arm around his husband, he pulled the man into his lap and held him close. He was not going to try and calm him down; he was not going to tell him it would be okay. Instead, he would do as he promised and be there for him.

In his gift, Saren created a duality in Ford. Most times, an Arlaed bond was broken, and the person of the half that did not die would live the rest of their life feeling the pain and emptiness, even if it lessened over time. Ford now had to live with the raw, fresh pain to his soul, mind, and heart while knowing his husband, his Arlaed, was right there, in his arms, living, and breathing.

Nothing else mattered, though. He would hold Taelian until the end of time if needed. And it was only in that embrace that Ford would realize that the hand that Lyria had severed had been clenched since he had awoken. Lifting it, blood was dripping from the creases in his palm’s flesh. His fist had been clenched so tightly that he had torn through many layers of his dermis and drawn deep wounds in his hand. As the tears still rolled down his cheeks, he would remain silent, consoling his husband for what he had just witnessed and lived through. Irony was a sickening thing.