Meanwhile, in the mansion of Izoria Vhal…

Lit sparsely by candlelight, servants and supplicants alike scurried around like rats. Fussing incessantly, upon the ritual apparatus set up amidst the shadows where esoteric runes glowed eerily upon the floor in fearful flashes of white and silver light. And there were screams, and the sound of eviscerating blades shrieking brutally upon flesh and bone alike.

The dragon prince, Izoria Vhal, he who was master of all he surveyed, sat alone in the darkness of his ritual chamber. Lost in thoughts, all alone, the eyes of his mortal façade closed shut, and the rotting ears of his true form taking in the sounds of his servants drawing their weapons and leaving the room to fight in his name. Clearly, his so-called brother, Terask Dagon, had made his move.

“Fifteen years of waiting… fifteen years of preparation…”

He uttered those words with a cruel relish, mouthing them slowly to taste each syllable upon the diseased palate of his forked tongue. It was supposed to be today, that the great work of the gods of old would finally be undone. Kidnappings, murders, experimentation – it was all meant to lead up to this one ritual that would set him free. His forefathers were once mortal, but it was a truth made irrelevant with the blessing of their mother Sophia, the Goddess of Life and Light. That they would ascend with wings and scales in her glory, forevermore. And in that, there was way to become mortal, once again. It was the only way to escape the curse of decay that held such painful sway upon any dragon’s scales.

“Hello! My name, is Anna de la Lune…”

These words, unlike those spoken before, he uttered with the best girlish impression he could muster despite the unease within him. And it felt sweet upon his tongue, like a piece of melting candy. He liked her real name very much, even if she had another name – Innocence. That one, it was on the posters and pictures of her work with Heretic that he had collected over the years of his stay in the Upper City, and he knew that was what they called her on stage. And to him, it was fake, ugly, and disgusting. Like the rot and decay so firmly rooted in his scales, that left him a pale mockery of all that he was once was and ever wanted to be.

“Anna…”

He uttered her name again, the one he liked, licking his lips in anticipation. It was dark, but he could, with his dying gaze, see the outline of her petite figure and the silky sheen of her lavender hair upon the posters plastered all over the walls of this room. He had more than enough memorabilia and merchandise of her to build a shrine in her honour, and he had done just that. Over the long years of death and decay, amidst the opulence of the Upper City while he searched and created this ritual that would save him.

“de… la…”

Now, always, and forevermore, he loved her. He loved her very much, loved her more than his half-breed of a son who he knew full well to be completely unworthy of his legacy, functionally useless even as a sorcerer’s apprentice. Loved her, possibly more than the throne that was to be his so long ago. Her voice, her smile, and her body – it was all so perfect. So much so, that he wanted to be her, and claim her all for himself. To live forever, in her flesh. It was not related to what he needed, but what he wanted had so nicely fit into his grand design. And in celebration of that, the tailors had prepared robes to fit her petite frame, made in the royal colours of purple and silver that were once his birthright.

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“Lune…”

And yet, it hurt to think of her. It really did, possibly more than the decay that would soon be the death of him. He wanted to love her, cherish her, but all he could do was make her cry whenever he tried to do that in the only way he knew. And a part of him feared, in these brief bouts of waking lucidity, what centuries of darkness had done to his mind. That there was no way to truly love and appreciate her, except to wear her skin and walk in her footsteps as one would a dress and a pair of boots.

“But you… understand me… do you not?”

Even so, even if she could not love him, he dared say that only she could understand him. If not now, then soon enough. To her, as she lay bleeding before him on so many occasions, he had spilled his darkest secrets, his fears, his dreams, and his desires. They were close, he liked to think, more so than that older sister of hers that she kept crying about like a helpless child. It was a shame, truly, that one’s true nature was revealed in times of great distress. Even if he loved her, she was indeed a coward a heart – having lived such a sheltered life. Like so many, that had succumbed to their wounds before him.

“Anna…”

“Torturer…”

The door had opened, and the screams had stopped. She, his beloved Anna de la Lune, had come here all on her own, engorged with blood and the eldritch taint of the Hellbourne upon her body like a plague. There was a contempt held within it all, a hatred and venom that shook him hard enough that a piece of rotting scale fell into the darkness around him.

“I’ve been waiting for this time to come… my Torturer…”

“Have you…? You, my one true love…”

“Yes… for so long, I’ve dreamed of this day, to stand before you like this…”

Wordlessly, Izoria Vhal turned around. The darkness ahead of him had been banished by the light of white and purple flames, that burned ethereally upon a girlish silhouette with a petite figure all too familiar to him, whose left breast bore the ill glow of a crimson light. And he could see her leering at him, with eyes turned green like molten envy. Revealing, within the glow of all those lights forced upon the darkness, the sight of black chains protruding thickly from her back and arms, their bladed and serrated edges bloody and scattered around her feet like the drapes of an iron cloak.

“That crimson glow, you reek so strongly of the Bloodstone…”

“Yes, indeed… Dagon has spoken through me.”

In wordless reply, Izoria Vhal grit his fangs. He assumed his true form in all its decayed glory, filling the darkness with his gargantuan frame of decayed scales and tattered wings. As his eyes, white like bleached bone, looked down towards his beloved Anna, the bloody tears in her eyes, and the green light of the sigil that glowed potently upon her hands in the symbol of a hydra made of bladed chains. And as tears of rotten blood flowed viscously down his eyes, he brought forth his sigil to bear upon his aching claws. Just like him, it was weak, and dying.

“I want to kill you, I want to make it slow and painful, and be your Torturer…” Anna uttered, a perverse smile forming upon her lips as she eyed the lines of the serpentine sigil that was once her worst nightmare. “But, compared to sis, you’re insignificant.”

“You dare, to call me…”

Before Izoria Vhal could finish his sentence, it was over. His massive frame collapsed onto the floor, an array of eldritch blades and harrowing links having torn him apart before he could make a single move. And he could see, in the fading gaze of his dying eyes, his scales and guts spilling forth into the darkness around him.

“Anna…”

“I do this for her…” Anna uttered to herself, her voice little more than a whisper as she left him. “I do this for her, and her alone…”